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< Back God Calling! David Cowles Jul 12, 2022 “I wrote the answers to life’s riddles on the cuffs of your shirts, and I encouraged you to cheat. And still…” God has something he’d like to get off his chest…and you’re not going to like it. Suffice to say, he’s not a happy camper! And who can blame him? What a mess! But that’s another subject for another day. We’ve got more than enough on our plates right now…and heeeeeere’s God: “I created heaven-and-earth (cosmos) and I endowed it (endowed you, homo sapiens ) with freedom, reason, and conscience. In your early days, I walked with you and gave you counsel. Later, when you had fallen under Pharoah’s yoke, I freed you from the bonds of slavery and husbanded you from Egypt to Canaan, the Promised Land. “I gave you 611 statutes designed to give you strength, health, long life, fertility, and prosperity and I guar….an….teed the results! 611 statutes. Wait, did I say 611? I’m sorry, I misspoke, hope I didn’t give you a heart attack; I meant to say two. To make things easier for you, I took the 611 statutes and added two more; but these two summarize the other 611. (Torah: 611 + 2 = 613) “I made a covenant with you (‘I will be your God and you will be my people’, Gen. 17: 7) and I reiterated that commitment on a number of occasions, all documented in scripture. “I might have expected that this would have been enough for you, but I know how weak free beings can be. I had a bad experience once before. Remember Lucifer, the ‘Light Bearer,’ my greatest creation, before you. Look at him now! Or don’t. At last report, he was hanging upside down, encased in a block of ice, at the nadir of Hell (check with Dante, Inferno ). I was determined that that would not happen to you! “So, I left study aids for you that even you could not ignore…and I don’t mean Cliffs Notes . I wanted to be sure that I would be in your face 24/7/365. Don’t worry; it’s for your own good. You’ll thank me later. “I wrote my will across the sky (cosmos), and I made sure that every entity within the cosmos reflected that cosmos (check with Leibniz, Monadology ). I encoded my will in the ‘signatures of all things I am (you are) here to read’ (check with Joyce, Ulysses ). And I embedded a copy of my will deep within your hearts (check with David, Psalms ). “So, who needs Cliffs Notes? I wrote the answers to life’s riddles on the cuffs of your shirts, and I encouraged you to cheat… “And yet…” Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Alice David Cowles In Looking-glass world, there’s plenty of there and then, but not a whiff of here and now. You remember Alice – the girl who chased a white rabbit down a hole and almost got her head chopped off by the Queen of Hearts! But did you know that later, when she was a bit older, Alice had another, entirely different adventure? Whenever Alice was bored, and she was often very bored – remember, in her day there was no TV, no smartphones and no video games – she would spend hours staring into the big mirror that hung on her living room wall. (I wonder if her parents limited her ‘screen’ time.) As she gazed into that looking glass, she could see a room on the other side. It looked just like her own living room…well, almost just like it. It looked just like it except that on the other side of the looking glass, everything was reversed! That’s right, reversed! If Alice stuck out her right hand to shake hands with the girl in the mirror, the girl in the mirror would stick out her left hand. If Alice wrote a note (from left to right, of course), the girl on the other side of the glass would write the very same note…but from right to left. Otherwise, everything looked exactly the same. But Alice wondered, “was it really the same?” After all, if right and left were reversed, maybe other things were reversed too. But how could she find out? “How nice it would be if we could only get into Looking-glass house,” she thought. And then, a moment later, there she was…on the other side of the glass! As expected, whatever Alice had been able to see in the mirror was just the same in Looking-glass house as it was in her own home. But what about everything she couldn’t see from her side? That turned out to be as different as different could be! Alice had been right to be suspicious of the mirror, after all. The mirror did not ‘reveal’ a world; it hid one. Alice immediately headed out of Looking-glass house and into its garden. She was not at all surprised to find flowers…but she was VERY surprised to learn that these flowers could talk! “…Can all the flowers talk?” Alice asked. “As well as you can,” said the Tiger-lily. “And a great deal louder.” Alice noticed a high hill in the distance. “I should see the garden far better,” said Alice to herself. “If I could get to the top of that hill: and here’s a path that leads straight to it…” Only it didn’t! No matter how hard Alice tried, no matter what turns she made, she always ended up right back where she started. But Alice was a very clever girl, so she decided to try a new plan. Instead of walking toward the hill and always missing it, she decided to walk in the opposite direction, away from the hill, to see where that would take her. Her plan succeeded beautifully. She hadn’t been walking more than a minute when she found herself at the base of the hill. So, it’s not just right and left that are reversed in Looking-glass world; it’s also to and from, forwards and backwards. At the base of the hill, Alice met the Red Queen. After some polite conversation, Alice and the queen suddenly started running. They ran hand-in-hand, as fast as they possibly could, for as long as they possibly could. But while she was running, Alice noticed something strange: the trees and the other things around them never changed; they seemed to move right along with them. Finally, the queen stopped, and Alice flopped to the ground breathless beside her. Then she noticed, “…We’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!” Alice complained to the queen, “…In our country, you’d generally get to somewhere else – if you ran very fast for a long time as we’ve been doing.” But the queen replied, “Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do just to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” Next, Alice encountered the White Queen and her majesty looked quite the mess. Alice did her best to help the queen tidy up, and then she suggested that the queen might like to hire a maid to help her stay neat and clean in the future. The queen offered the job to Alice, “Two pence a week and jam every other day.” Imagine getting by on an allowance of two pennies a week! I guess pennies could buy a lot more in Alice’s time. But Alice didn’t object to the low wage; instead, she protested that she didn’t like jam, “Well, I don’t want any to-day at any rate.” “You couldn’t have it if you did want it,” the queen said. “The rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today …” Alice objected, “It must come sometimes to jam today.” “No, it can’t,” said the queen. “It’s jam every other day; today isn’t any other day, you know.” “I don’t understand you,” said Alice, obviously puzzled. “That’s the effect of living backwards,” the queen explained. “It always makes one a little giddy at first.” Then the queen decided to tell Alice more about what it’s like to live on her side of the glass. “Memory works both ways,” she said. “I’m sure mine only works one way,” interrupted Alice. “I can’t remember things before they happen…What sorts of things do you remember best?” “Oh, things that happened the week after next,” the queen replied. The queen pointed to the King’s Messenger, “He’s in prison now, being punished, and the trial doesn’t even begin till next Wednesday, and of course, the crime comes last of all.” Before Alice could object to this unfair treatment, the queen began screaming. Alice rushed to comfort her, “What is the matter? Have you pricked your finger?” “I haven’t pricked it yet,” the queen said. “But I soon shall.” And sure enough, a moment later, she did just that! But let’s get back to the matter of the jam. Alice explained to the queen that she did not like jam, “Well, I don’t want any to-day at any rate.” Remember what the queen said? “’You couldn’t have it if you did want it…the rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today .” So, in Looking-glass world there is a past (yesterday) and a future (tomorrow), but never a present (jam today). Later, Alice found herself in a shop where every shelf seemed to be overflowing with interesting things to buy. But whenever she walked up to any particular shelf, that shelf was always completely empty. The shelves that are there are always full, but the shelf that is here is always empty! In Looking-glass world, it seems you can have all the jam you want…just not now ; and you can buy anything you want…just not here . The stores are always brimming with merchandise, but always out of whatever it is you want. In Looking-glass world, there’s plenty of there and then, but not a whiff of here and now . Later, while visiting Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Alice sees the Red King. He is asleep. “He’s dreaming now,” said Tweedledee. “And what do you think he’s dreaming about?” “Nobody can guess that!” Alice replied. Alice is depending on the difference between inside and outside to keep her thoughts, and the king’s, private. But Tweedledee knows better. The way Looking-glass world works, inner and outer could be reversed; or the distinction could be wiped away entirely. Either way, Tweedledee knows that in Looking-glass world, anyone can see what you’re thinking just by looking at you. “Why about you !” Tweedledee continued, returning to the content of the Red King’s dream. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you’d be?” “Where I am now, of course,” said Alice. “’You’d be nowhere,” replied Tweedledee. “Why you’re only a sort of thing in his dream!’” (It seems that Shakespeare listened to Tweedledee’s podcasts because in one of his most famous plays, The Tempest , he wrote, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”) “If the King were to wake,” added Tweedledum. “You’d go out – bang! – just like a candle!’” Toward the end of her stay in Looking-glass world, Alice met the famous Humpty-Dumpty. Like any good girl of her day, Alice knew her nursery rhymes backwards and forwards, so when she met Humpty, she was immediately worried about his safety. “Don’t you think you’d be safer down on the ground? That wall is so very narrow!” In response, Humpty Dumpty growled. “Of course, I don’t think so. Why, if I ever did fall off – which there’s no chance of – but if I did…the King has promised me – with his very own mouth…” Here Alice interrupted, “To send all his horses and all his men…” Moments later, a crash shook the forest from end to end and soldiers came running, first two or three, then ten or twenty, finally thousands. So many that they seemed to fill the whole forest! The king had kept his promise. But would his horses and his men be able to put Humpty together again? Maybe not on our side of the looking glass, but on the other side…who knows? At the end of her adventure, when Alice was once again safely back on her own side of the mirror, she thought about her experience and said to her pussycat, “’Now, Kitty, let’s consider, who it was that dreamed it all…it must have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my dream, of course – but then I was part of his dream too!’” David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Previous Next

David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. < Back David Cowles Editor-in-Chief David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com Anaxagoras The Probability of Nothing The Secret Things of Life Zeno's New Paradox World Without God Amen How Matthew Spins Mark Robert Frost Was Wrong The Seven Pillars of Wisdom God is a Bother! Destiny Versus Fate Moses, Machiavelli, and Morality Is the Universe Real? Jeremiah Mark's Marks of Authenticity The Owl and the Pussycat The Meaning of Life The Frost Diamond Dante and the Yellow Submarine Super-Determinism Marx vs. Mark Sacramental Priesthood The Wonder School The Concept of Death I'm Ageless and Timeless Is Techno-Optimism a New Religion? Happiness We All Live in a Yellow Submarine Leviticus and the Fed Arithmetic Marcel Proust Life is a Movie Alphabet Philip Goff I Seem To Be a Klein Bottle Determinism...or Entaglement? Should I Vote? Robert Frost A 'New' Old Theory of Consciousness Mythology Before Marvel Comics Home Alone Is Childhood a Crime? Political Alienation Do You Know What I am? Do We Need God? Logical Positivism Utilitarianism The 'O Antiphons' Love...Actually! Do You Noh? Is Childhood a Crime? Political Alienation Leibniz Causality and 'The Bhagavad Gita' R U WYSIWYG? Time for a New Turing Test Is God Dead? The 7th Day Satan, Mary, and ‘Da Judge’ Is Childhood a Crime? Political Alienation Idolatry Chatting with C.S. Lewis Do Bots Know Beauty? AI for Healthcare Friedrich Nietzsche Personae I Am the Walrus Ship of Theseus The Theology of Mikhail Bakunin Eucharist Read on a Beach Ave Maria Albert Camus The Comedy of Job The Meaning of Life Thrown by Heidegger Apocolypse Now! Ephesians 2:10 God's Will Revelation Kabbalah and Thomas the Train Whitehead and Zohar The Structure of Prayer The Our Father Where the Time Goes Mythology Now! Morals and Values I Seem to be a Membrane Football and Quantum Mechanics Messiah Redux May Day My Breastplate The Lottery Two-Faced God Beyond Pascal's Wager Returning to Andromeda The Lego Movie and John Stewart Bell JK Rowling and Pliny the Elder Hell Middle Voice Who R U? Beatitutes Psalm 151 Educating Christians Past, Present, Future Particularity Jericho Christian Anarchism Boethius Our Inanimate Neighbors Converge This! - Dante and The Beatles Converge This! - John Paul Sartre and Pope Leo XIII Job is My Superhero Handel's Messiah A Universe From Nothing Bakunin Nailed It: The Sterile Socialism of Marx and Engles Job vs. James, Rex Christ the King Football Math Moore's Nativity Be a Bee Bible Read Backwards What Did John See? St. Paul's Lord's Prayer Achilles and Tortoise Prepare to Be Shocked Pronouns Systematic Philosophy Is This Really All There Is? Ectaban I Wasn't Anything TOE Faith, Hope, Love Cosmic Crossroads Mommy Math Part One S erenity Prayer Xiako Can't Count Alice Learn to Swym Speaking Piraha Imagine! The Final Psalms Corinthians The Nature of Time Science and the Yellow Submari ne Part II Part II Competing Creeds The Great Commandment Shakespeare Nihilism How to Coach an Undefeated Football Team The Sultan and the Sea Jesus is Badass The People's Creed Teaching Physics in the 21st Century Science and the Yellow Submarine Genesis Wins the Nobel Prize Hows and Whys The Riddle of Job Christology 101 The Problem of Good Eternity vs. Immortality The Meaning of Music Mary Poppins, Sufi Master Haiku Corner Vacuum Monster Quark Soup

< Back Messengers Among Us Annie D. Stutley If God sent His only Son to earth, not just to save us from our sins, but because He knew how difficult it was for humans to believe in something we cannot see, why wouldn’t He still use that tactic today? Knowing our vulnerabilities, understanding us the way a parent understands their child, why wouldn’t God send us messages through people we trust? I almost died when I was seven-years-old. We were on a “Great American Winnebago Road Trip” through the Wild West — at the mercy of my scenic route-loving father. ( Link to that tale here. ) One day, we stopped for a picnic in a park in Albuquerque, New Mexico. To get to the shaded area and playground, we had to walk across a four-lane thoroughfare. Off my sisters went, along with Mom, then I followed. Pop took the rear. Maybe it was the anticipation of new, unexplored play equipment, or maybe I was just an impatient kid, but I took off like a rocket, eager to explore the unknown. I zoomed through each lane until my toe nearly collided with the white dotted lines of the last lane. Suddenly, from behind, I heard Pop yell, “Annie! STOP!” And I did. I stopped right there in the third lane just as a white pickup truck sped past me in the fourth lane, blowing my strawberry-blonde hair over my flushed cheeks. To this day, I’m surprised that I listened to Pop. I wasn’t exactly a contrary child, but typical seven-year-old Annie would have kept running, hollering back, “Why?” But that day I didn’t question, and my life was spared. I’ve wondered whether an angel held its hand before me, preventing me from crossing the lane. Others might say it was just good luck or that it simply wasn’t my time to go. While I do believe in angels, I don’t think it was an angel or fate that prevented me from being crushed by a truck that day. I think it was a messenger. Thirty-three years later, Pop scheduled meetings with three oncologists for his pancreatic cancer diagnosis. He had only been diagnosed three days when we walked into the office of a tiny, slender woman with a youthful, kind face. We met with her for half an hour, me rattling off a list of questions, and Pop quietly sizing her answers. She was sharp, yet sensitive, and told us the truth about Pop’s situation without adding any additional fears to those already wrestling inside us. When we left, I asked Pop what he thought. “She was good,” he said. “I like her.” “Well, we have two other appointments to go to,” I reminded him. “No,” he said. “We don’t need to bother with the others. Let’s just stick with her.” “Why?” I asked. “What if the other doctors are better?” “Because,” he said as I wheeled him to the car. By then, Pop’s mobility had already begun to deteriorate. “I think God sent her to us.” I couldn’t argue with that. He was the patient, after all, and also, I was accustomed to Pop proclaiming such prophecies. A deeply religious man, Pop often delivered bold messages to anyone, never concerned with whether they were a believer or not. If you had a headache, he’d place his hand on your forehead and say, “In Jesus’s name, be healed.” He talked openly about the Holy Spirit and how its power was the same as that which raised Jesus from the dead. To him, if we have the Holy Spirit within us, why can’t we pray over someone who is sick or proclaim that God sent us a doctor? Still, his quick decision bothered me. Then, when just a little over two months later, he passed away, his body never strong enough to receive any treatment but a couple of “last hope” surgeries (brought on by other doctors) and hospice, I really questioned the whole “God sent her to us” statement. How could God have sent us someone who did basically nothing? It was just two days after my cancer diagnosis when, while exercising on the elliptical, I heard my husband calling me from our bedroom. “I have the hospital on the phone,” he hollered. “They gave us two names to choose from for oncologists.” The first name belonged to a male doctor I’d never heard of before. But the other belonged to a tiny, slender woman with a youthful, kind face, a doctor who was sharp, yet sensitive. I figured these were the top two oncologists at the hospital because my husband was on the phone with the CEO. (In what can only be divine intervention, he happens to know the hospital CEO.) I also knew that I had never come to terms with Pop’s prophecy about his oncologist. It had haunted me for two years because never before had my father been so wrong about God. I simply could not see how she was “sent to us” if she was so useless in his case. My first reaction was to go with the name I didn’t recognize. It would be a clean start. I wouldn’t be haunted by ghosts of Pop’s cancer. And as I started to say as such to my husband, I heard Pop, as boldly as the day he hollered, “Annie! STOP!” Only this time I heard from behind, “I think God sent her to us.” So, I stopped. I got off the elliptical, which I never do mid-workout, and ran to my husband. My eyes glistened as I told him what Pop had said two and a half years earlier. “What if God sent her to us for me ? What if Pop unknowingly said those words because I would need her one day?” So we chose her. And when she walked into her office two days later for my first appointment, she looked me square in the eyes and gently said, “What you need to know is that you are not your father. His cancer was bad -- as bad as it gets. Yours is not. Any fear you have because of him, you need to let go.” I cried. No, I wept. She handed me Kleenex, and I snotted right there beside her -- ugly, ugly tears. Tears of relief. For the last week I had been tangled in a ball of anxiety because all my thoughts were of my father’s cancer -- the pain, the suffering, and mostly, the hopelessness that cast a sinister shadow on our hearts. My fears had shaken me to my core, making me unable to see clearly how much better I had it, how much earlier I was diagnosed, and how promising my prospects were. In that visit, she rescued me from the first tangle. I see this doctor every two weeks. We are becoming fast friends. She is just as kind and sensitive with me as she was with Pop -- an empathy cancer patients need. But that’s not why I now believe Pop’s prophecy. One visit was maybe only seven minutes -- the shortest visit I’ve ever had with her. The entire time she talked about my children, their sports and dance and what they were up to. She didn’t mention me at all. “Doctor,” I finally cut in. “What about me? My labs? My progress?” “Oh, you?” she smiled. “You’re fine.” And she practically waved me off. “I’m not worried about you.” So, I said, “Well, if you’re not worried, then I guess I shouldn’t be.” When I shared that account with my sisters, one of them said, “Oh! If we could only learn to say that to God every day!” The next visit, I told her that my mother-in-law was in town and that she wept as she dropped me off for chemo. “Why?” my doctor asked. “Well, I guess because it’s overwhelming to send your daughter-in-law off to chemo,” I answered. She stopped what she was doing and said, “She knows your chemotherapy is curative, right? You’ve told her this?” “I think so,” I said, but of course, I hadn’t told my mother-in-law that. How could I, when as strong as my faith is, I’m still attacked by enough doubt that I’m afraid to be so bold with my prognosis? What if I’m wrong? My doctor leaned in closer. “Do you know that what we’re doing is curative?” “Yes,” I lied. In the last conversation we had, we went over what happens in August when chemotherapy ends -- what the next five years of tumor marker tests, CT scans, and MRIs will look like. “How do you feel about it all?” I asked her nervously. “Oh about you ? I’m not worried. You’re going to be fine,” she said. There it was again. Another bold, promising statement from her, delivered with the utmost peace. I had been running toward the fourth lane since my diagnosis, disregarding any promising messages, but I finally stopped. It had sunk in why God absolutely did send us this doctor. The Bible’s pages are filled with prophecies from God’s messengers -- Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, John the Baptist, Paul. But did I ever consider what happened after the Bible was finished and sent off to the Random House of early Christianity for publishing? Did God suddenly stop sending His messages through others because, well, the book is done, and we can all just refer back to it if we have any questions -- the end? If God sent His only Son to earth, not just to save us from our sins, but because He knew how difficult it was for humans to believe in something we cannot see, why wouldn’t He still use that tactic today? Knowing our vulnerabilities, understanding us the way a parent understands their child, why wouldn’t God send us messages through people we trust? And why wouldn’t that message come from the lips of a tiny, slender woman with a youthful, kind face, a doctor who is sharp, yet sensitive? I know enough to know that there are angels among us, miracles are real, and sometimes when we can’t hear God, we hear Him through someone we can see and hear. “And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.” (Isaiah 30:21) Pop was God’s messenger thirty-five years ago in Albuquerque. And God, knowing the worry and fear I battle today, has sent me another messenger to silence that doubt, allowing me to once and for all trust God unconditionally and follow Him where He’s leading me. He sends messengers to you too. Maybe you are His messenger today. I recently read that prophets were once referred to as “Man of God.” Pop wasn’t a prophet on paper, but I think he came pretty close. Unknowingly, we chose the words, “Man of God” for his gravestone. Annie D. Stutley lives and writes in New Orleans, La. She edits several small publications and contributes to various print and online magazines. Her blog, " That Time You, " was ranked in the Top 100 Blogs by FeedSpot. To read more of her work, go to her website , or follow her at @anniedstutley or Annie D. Stutley-writer on Facebook. Previous Next

< Back The Will of God David Cowles May 18, 2023 “…Whatever injects beauty into the world…fills it with truth…restores justice…is the Will of God. Whatever happens will be redeemed and whatever is redeemed is God’s Will.” In most editions of the Bible, the Book of Job is suspended between Torah and the Gospels . Its position is apt. It is a lengthy (over long?) meditation on the Problem of Evil – a ‘problem’ introduced in Genesis but resolved in Revelation . If this sounds surprisingly simplistic, it’s because it is. Nevertheless, the Problem of Evil is cited by non-believers as the number one reason for their rejection of Judeo-Christian theology. It was also the rationale Bertrand Russell relied on in his best-seller, Why I am not a Christian. Why the disconnect? It begins, unfortunately, with our ( mis ) understanding of the story of creation itself. The popular image of God shouting commands into an abyss is anti-Biblical…and a bit ridiculous. No wonder folks don’t believe. It is important to remember that YHWH said, “ Let there be light.” ( Genesis , 1: 3) He did not say, “Be there, Light!” as most people seem to think. God is not auditioning for the role of ‘frustrated parent’ barking orders at a naughty child; nor is he a raging motorist, yelling, “Start, you sucker!” as his stalled automobile struggles to turnover. Rather, he is a compassionate curator ! Nor did he imagine that light would obliterate primal darkness (“…the earth was without form with darkness over the abyss…” – v. 2). Instead, we learn that God “separated the light from the darkness” (v. 3). Later, in the Gospel of John , we celebrate the fact that “the darkness has not overcome it.” (1: 5) Phase #1 of the creation process was not complete, however, until “God saw that it (the light) was good” (v. 4) and “Evening (darkness) came and morning (light) followed, the first day.” (v. 5) All of which raises an obvious question: Why would an ‘omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent’ God need to ‘wait and see’ before determining that created light was a good thing? Could God have created something that was not good ? Would God need to pause and assess developments before rendering judgement? In a sense the whole so-called Problem of Evil is addressed and resolved in these first 5 verses of the Bible. All the stuff about God’s ‘omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence’ comes later and, for our purposes right now, is beside the point. The testimony of Genesis is clear: God’s hands are clean! Not so, the Book of Job . Here God is put on trial, charged with ‘perverting the course of justice’. Job has quite literally staked his life, his health, his family, his fortune, and his reputation on the verdict. But our prototypical existential hero has a tough ‘row to hoe’. God is represented, albeit incompetently, by a ‘dream team’ consisting of three ‘wise men’ and a ‘fool’. Speaking of ‘fools’, Job appears pro se ; he has himself for a lawyer! Worse, God is not only the defendant but also judge and jury. God would happily recuse himself…but who is qualified to take over? Can anyone say, “Conflict of interest?” The trial raises every imaginable legal issue. Does Job have ‘standing’ to sue God? Can God even be sued? Can God be compelled (by subpoena) to come to court? If the court were to rule against God, how could it enforce its verdict? How could it impose a sentence on the Creator of Heaven and Earth? Now the matter of God’s ‘omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence’ takes center stage. Unlike Genesis , Job presents the Problem of Evil in its more familiar trappings. A full account of trial proceedings are available elsewhere on this site. The transcript is instructive. Job’s understanding of evil is one most of us will recognize: “(Human beings) are quashed more easily than a moth, from daybreak to evening they are crushed; when it is not even nightfall, they disappear, forever unnoticed. The pegs of their tent are pulled up. They die without knowledge.” (4: 19b – 21) ‘I have lived a righteous and just life; yet I am being punished most severely. Others, not nearly as upright as me, often in fact deliberate doers of evil, are not punished at all. They live lavish lives in good health and pass that wealth intact on to future generations (this was before Estate Taxes). I, on the other hand, no longer have assets…or children to leave them to if I did. I live on a dunghill, my body covered with scabs.’ God, however, approaches the problem from a very different perspective: “Behold now Behemoth which like you I created (40: 15)...Of all that’s under heaven, he is mine. I cannot keep silent about him, the fact of his incomparable valor…He has no match on earth, who is made as fearless as he? …Over beasts of all kinds he is king.” (41: 3b - 26) Job views Behemoth from a human perspective. He is fearsome, dangerous and destructive. He is the embodiment of evil. But that’s not God’s perspective. God sees things from Behemoth’s perspective as well as Job’s and God values Behemoth’s qualities, the very qualities that Job dreads. Even more importantly, God sees things from a cosmic, ecological perspective: “ Who cleaves a downpour's channel and a path for the thunderstorm to rain down on land without people, on wilderness with no human in it, drenching utter wasteland and sprouting grassy growth." (38:25-27) But Job is unphased; he will not budge. He meets God’s bluster with his trademarked ‘patience’. He has faith that justice will out: in the end the court will have no choice but to find in his favor. Clearly, God has a broader cosmological mandate than Job. He values Behemoth’s qualities per se , oblivious to the intermediate ends for which they’re used. That is the price we pay for our ontological freedom. God can afford to overlook the transient. He knows the Universe, as he created it, will ‘come round’ in the end. The coming of the Kingdom is inevitable. It is built into the teleological structure of Being. ‘When’ and how that Kingdom comes to be is undetermined; that’s up to us ! But that it comes to be and what it comes to be (divine values) are hardwired. We might sympathize with God’s predicament, but Job never takes his eye off the ball. He ignores God’s pleas for understanding; he stands his ground. Suffice to say, the procedural issues are ultimately resolved to the satisfaction of both parties and, in a stunning reversal of fortunes, God finds against himself and restores all of Job’s assets plus damages . But Job remains underwhelmed. He expected this outcome all along. His hurdles were merely procedural. Once the trial commenced, Job trusted that he would prevail. Even the obvious conflict of interest didn’t concern him. Job did not believe that God’s nature would allow him to act unjustly…and he was right! Right trumps wrong after all. But the court’s decision applies just to this one case; millions of Job’s fellow sufferers, while buoyed by the trial’s outcome, remain mired in pain. The final resolution, the cosmic solution, comes in the New Testament’s Resurrection narratives and in the Book of Revelation . Here we learn (after the prophet Isaiah) that God is our fellow traveler, that he suffers ‘the whips and snares of time’ alongside us, via compassion and ultimately, via Incarnation. He is born, tiny and defenseless, into our world at our level. He endures in full the pain of mortality, the dark night of despair, and a slow and painful death on a cross. Clearly, our God is no wimp! But had the story ended at Cavalry, we’d still be in rough shape; fortunately, it didn’t! Jesus overcame mortality, pain and death via his Resurrection and eventual Ascension into Heaven (where he sits at the right hand of his Father). Finally, the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation , describes in minute detail, albeit coded in symbolism, the process by which evil will be eradicated, root and branch, from the World, and our primal Paradise restored, fulfilling Paul’s assurance that God will be ‘all in all’ (1 Cor. 15: 28), pan in panti ( Anaxagoras ). Once Scripture is understood in this way, i.e. on its own terms and not those imposed on it by non-believers, one can only ask, “What problem of evil?” Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Alice David Cowles In Looking-glass world, there’s plenty of there and then, but not a whiff of here and now. You remember Alice – the girl who chased a white rabbit down a hole and almost got her head chopped off by the Queen of Hearts! But did you know that later, when she was a bit older, Alice had another, entirely different adventure? Whenever Alice was bored, and she was often very bored – remember, in her day there was no TV, no smartphones and no video games – she would spend hours staring into the big mirror that hung on her living room wall. (I wonder if her parents limited her ‘screen’ time.) As she gazed into that looking glass, she could see a room on the other side. It looked just like her own living room…well, almost just like it. It looked just like it except that on the other side of the looking glass, everything was reversed! That’s right, reversed! If Alice stuck out her right hand to shake hands with the girl in the mirror, the girl in the mirror would stick out her left hand. If Alice wrote a note (from left to right, of course), the girl on the other side of the glass would write the very same note…but from right to left. Otherwise, everything looked exactly the same. But Alice wondered, “was it really the same?” After all, if right and left were reversed, maybe other things were reversed too. But how could she find out? “How nice it would be if we could only get into Looking-glass house,” she thought. And then, a moment later, there she was…on the other side of the glass! As expected, whatever Alice had been able to see in the mirror was just the same in Looking-glass house as it was in her own home. But what about everything she couldn’t see from her side? That turned out to be as different as different could be! Alice had been right to be suspicious of the mirror, after all. The mirror did not ‘reveal’ a world; it hid one. Alice immediately headed out of Looking-glass house and into its garden. She was not at all surprised to find flowers…but she was VERY surprised to learn that these flowers could talk! “…Can all the flowers talk?” Alice asked. “As well as you can,” said the Tiger-lily. “And a great deal louder.” Alice noticed a high hill in the distance. “I should see the garden far better,” said Alice to herself. “If I could get to the top of that hill: and here’s a path that leads straight to it…” Only it didn’t! No matter how hard Alice tried, no matter what turns she made, she always ended up right back where she started. But Alice was a very clever girl, so she decided to try a new plan. Instead of walking toward the hill and always missing it, she decided to walk in the opposite direction, away from the hill, to see where that would take her. Her plan succeeded beautifully. She hadn’t been walking more than a minute when she found herself at the base of the hill. So, it’s not just right and left that are reversed in Looking-glass world; it’s also to and from, forwards and backwards. At the base of the hill, Alice met the Red Queen. After some polite conversation, Alice and the queen suddenly started running. They ran hand-in-hand, as fast as they possibly could, for as long as they possibly could. But while she was running, Alice noticed something strange: the trees and the other things around them never changed; they seemed to move right along with them. Finally, the queen stopped, and Alice flopped to the ground breathless beside her. Then she noticed, “…We’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!” Alice complained to the queen, “…In our country, you’d generally get to somewhere else – if you ran very fast for a long time as we’ve been doing.” But the queen replied, “Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do just to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” Next, Alice encountered the White Queen and her majesty looked quite the mess. Alice did her best to help the queen tidy up, and then she suggested that the queen might like to hire a maid to help her stay neat and clean in the future. The queen offered the job to Alice, “Two pence a week and jam every other day.” Imagine getting by on an allowance of two pennies a week! I guess pennies could buy a lot more in Alice’s time. But Alice didn’t object to the low wage; instead, she protested that she didn’t like jam, “Well, I don’t want any to-day at any rate.” “You couldn’t have it if you did want it,” the queen said. “The rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today …” Alice objected, “It must come sometimes to jam today.” “No, it can’t,” said the queen. “It’s jam every other day; today isn’t any other day, you know.” “I don’t understand you,” said Alice, obviously puzzled. “That’s the effect of living backwards,” the queen explained. “It always makes one a little giddy at first.” Then the queen decided to tell Alice more about what it’s like to live on her side of the glass. “Memory works both ways,” she said. “I’m sure mine only works one way,” interrupted Alice. “I can’t remember things before they happen…What sorts of things do you remember best?” “Oh, things that happened the week after next,” the queen replied. The queen pointed to the King’s Messenger, “He’s in prison now, being punished, and the trial doesn’t even begin till next Wednesday, and of course, the crime comes last of all.” Before Alice could object to this unfair treatment, the queen began screaming. Alice rushed to comfort her, “What is the matter? Have you pricked your finger?” “I haven’t pricked it yet,” the queen said. “But I soon shall.” And sure enough, a moment later, she did just that! But let’s get back to the matter of the jam. Alice explained to the queen that she did not like jam, “Well, I don’t want any to-day at any rate.” Remember what the queen said? “’You couldn’t have it if you did want it…the rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today .” So, in Looking-glass world there is a past (yesterday) and a future (tomorrow), but never a present (jam today). Later, Alice found herself in a shop where every shelf seemed to be overflowing with interesting things to buy. But whenever she walked up to any particular shelf, that shelf was always completely empty. The shelves that are there are always full, but the shelf that is here is always empty! In Looking-glass world, it seems you can have all the jam you want…just not now ; and you can buy anything you want…just not here . The stores are always brimming with merchandise, but always out of whatever it is you want. In Looking-glass world, there’s plenty of there and then, but not a whiff of here and now . Later, while visiting Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Alice sees the Red King. He is asleep. “He’s dreaming now,” said Tweedledee. “And what do you think he’s dreaming about?” “Nobody can guess that!” Alice replied. Alice is depending on the difference between inside and outside to keep her thoughts, and the king’s, private. But Tweedledee knows better. The way Looking-glass world works, inner and outer could be reversed; or the distinction could be wiped away entirely. Either way, Tweedledee knows that in Looking-glass world, anyone can see what you’re thinking just by looking at you. “Why about you !” Tweedledee continued, returning to the content of the Red King’s dream. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you’d be?” “Where I am now, of course,” said Alice. “’You’d be nowhere,” replied Tweedledee. “Why you’re only a sort of thing in his dream!’” (It seems that Shakespeare listened to Tweedledee’s podcasts because in one of his most famous plays, The Tempest , he wrote, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”) “If the King were to wake,” added Tweedledum. “You’d go out – bang! – just like a candle!’” Toward the end of her stay in Looking-glass world, Alice met the famous Humpty-Dumpty. Like any good girl of her day, Alice knew her nursery rhymes backwards and forwards, so when she met Humpty, she was immediately worried about his safety. “Don’t you think you’d be safer down on the ground? That wall is so very narrow!” In response, Humpty Dumpty growled. “Of course, I don’t think so. Why, if I ever did fall off – which there’s no chance of – but if I did…the King has promised me – with his very own mouth…” Here Alice interrupted, “To send all his horses and all his men…” Moments later, a crash shook the forest from end to end and soldiers came running, first two or three, then ten or twenty, finally thousands. So many that they seemed to fill the whole forest! The king had kept his promise. But would his horses and his men be able to put Humpty together again? Maybe not on our side of the looking glass, but on the other side…who knows? At the end of her adventure, when Alice was once again safely back on her own side of the mirror, she thought about her experience and said to her pussycat, “’Now, Kitty, let’s consider, who it was that dreamed it all…it must have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my dream, of course – but then I was part of his dream too!’” David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Share Previous Next

< Back The Myth of the Maze David Cowles Sep 3, 2024 “Have you ever found yourself in a small, brightly lit room?” It’s something out of science fiction…or a primetime network cop show. You’ve just awakened, but not in your comfortable bed in your familiar bedroom. Today, you find yourself naked in a small, brightly lit room…and then you notice: your memories have been wiped. Well, partially wiped: you have no ‘thetic’ memories, memories of who you are or what the world is like; but you’ve retained all your ‘non-thetic’ memories. If you could walk, talk, swim, or ride a bike, you still can. You may even be able to chew gum at the same time. But you can’t recite the alphabet, add a column of figures, or discuss the Fall of Rome. Bummer! Fortunately this room has a doorway that opens out onto a corridor. Instinctively, you begin to explore. One corridor leads to another and then to another. Corridors branch off from each other. You wander aimlessly, with no fixed direction. Soon you realize that there are other people in these corridors. They don’t threaten you; in fact, for the most part, they pretty much ignore you. Apparently, each person is pursuing a personal agenda – but what agenda? Exceptions prove the rule: every so often you meet someone who seems interested in you , who tries to engage with you. Should you trust these people? Or fear them? How should you respond? Then things start to get interesting. Up to now, it’s been just ‘another tequila Sunday’ (excuse me, a what?).The bare and empty corridors begin to fill-in. They are punctuated with ‘stations’: food stops, drink stops, stations with free VR headsets, music stations, movie stations, stations with video games, handball courts, etc. You’d be reminded of a casino complex in Vegas or luxury seating at an NFL event, if you knew what they were. You could get used to this! Time goes by. You’re comfortable…but perplexed. What is all this? What’s going on? Do these corridors lead anywhere? If so, where? And why? And who are these ‘other people’ anyway? Gradually, you build your ‘social map’. Each person you meet is unique. But they seem to cluster into 4 fairly distinct groups. You might think ‘middle school cliques’…if you had any idea what a ‘middle school’ was. One group is frantic; they’re fixated on one thing only: We’ve got to get out of this place…if it’s the last thing we ever do! (Where’d that come from?) “Where are they going?” you wonder. “What’s out there?” Another group seems in no hurry to leave; they just want to understand! What’s it all about, Alfie? (Who’s Alfie ?) Folks in the third group don’t seem to care where they’re going or why they’re here. They’re more than happy just to enjoy this world and all it has to offer. Why would anyone want to leave? Who cares what’s out there? Or why it’s there? Or why we’re here? Being here is a gift! Enjoy it, prolong it, be grateful for it. Our final group doesn’t seem to care about any of this. They are focused on each other. “How can I help? What can I do to make your time here better?” (Whatever ‘better’ is!) Like any prison, this one ‘encourages’ you to join one of the ‘gangs’; you probably don’t want to do your time here as a lone wolf. To survive, you’ll need to create an avatar…choose an identity…and then keep your head down! But which identity? What turns you on? What floats your boat? Are you motivated by accomplishment, by knowledge, by enjoyment, or by service? Who R U? Or better yet, who do you choose to be? Ok, it’s a nice fable. But what’s the point? I mean, have you ever found ‘yourself naked in a small, brightly lit room’? A room with ‘a doorway that opens out’ into a maze of unmarked corridors? Have you? If you did, who did you choose to be? Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

“Eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. It’s a terrible way to live! But we’re living it…(but) it wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t…have to be this way.” < Back Middle Voice David Cowles Mar 1, 2023 “Eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. It’s a terrible way to live! But we’re living it…(but) it wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t…have to be this way.” According to Benjamin Whorf, language is a record of how we see the world, and conversely, language conditions us to see the world in a particular way: a paradigmatic, if somewhat diabolical, example of non-linear, auto-reinforcing process. Take English, for example. When we speak, most of our verbs are either active or passive . We call that the “voice” of the verb. In an active/passive voiced language, we are always doing something to someone (or something) or someone (or something) is doing something to us: eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. It’s a terrible way to live! But we’re living it. The Lex Talionis (‘eye for an eye’), literally the law of retaliation , is the paradigmatic expression of such an active/passive world view. Scotty broke the vase: active voice. Scotty is called the ‘subject’ and my poor Ming is called the ‘object’ of his action. This construction first separates Scotty from what he’s done. In fact, Scotty’s action itself assumes the status of an object; it is something Scotty possesses: “ his action”. Scotty acted, and the vase ‘reacted’ (by shattering). The flow is in one direction: it’s a vector. Alternatively, the vase was broken by Scotty: passive voice. It’s the same event but this time seen from the point of view of the victim, my precious artifact. The vase is now the subject, but the action is still unidirectional, still a vector. In one sense, the active and passive voices are opposites; but in another sense, they are really the same thing. (How often that is true in our world!) They both describe the same event, in the same way, but just from opposite viewpoints. So we can say that English is an ‘active/passive voiced language’. Syntax speaks volumes about how we understand events, and, therefore, how we understand the world. An action, according to our grammar, is a vectored relationship between two unequal participants, a terribly minor, in not null, subset of all that goes on in our world. The world consists solely of events. If our preferred way of defining an event is in terms of a unidirectional relationship between unequal participants, then for us the world will consist primarily of such actions. This will be the logos we impose upon the world, and our language will reflect that logos . Of course, it works both ways. To a large extent, we learn about the world through language. Our language teaches us to see our world in terms of unequal, unidirectional relationships. Our language creates our logos, thereby defining our world for us. Putting it another way, we create our world in the image and likeness of our language. Does this language serve our purposes ? You bet it does! It’s hard to imagine a Golden Gate Bridge without it. Our language essentially reduces Being to a schematic. But does such a language actually meet our needs ? Not so much! In the real world, action is rarely, maybe never , entirely one directional. “I hit the nail” is actually an abstract simplification of a much more complex process. When my hammer connects with the nail head, the nail moves (hopefully) and the hammer recoils (predictably) sending vibrations down my arm…and that’s assuming I didn’t also hit my thumb in the process. Syntax unravels the unity of being and displays it like a collection of butterflies pinned to the wall of a natural history museum. The fact is that every real action acts on the so-called subject as well as on the so-called object. In the example of Scotty and the vase, that reality is somewhat trivial and can probably be safely ignored…that is, unless I accept Scotty’s explanation that the vase jumped off the shelf and attacked him, possibly the act of a neighborhood genie. And why not, the very same thing happened at Billy’s house just last week. It’s a pattern you see. Better call Ghostbusters ! But did you notice the real ‘ghost’ in this story? It’s Scotty’s language. He translated what might have been an accident into the intentional action of a genie. But what if we’re trying to model a chemical reaction, or worse, a quantum mechanical process, or even worse, some sort of ecological phenomenon? How do we describe these events using just active and passive verbs? We can’t. At best, we can approximate clumsily in simple situations. “Two hydrogen atoms each lend an electron to one oxygen atom; or an oxygen atom borrows an electron from each of two hydrogen atoms.” (Hint: it’s water!) When we get into more complex interactions, language breaks down completely, and we have to resort to diagrams (e.g. Feynman diagrams) or equations or shoulder shrugs. Now imagine the difficulty of modeling complex human interactions using just active and passive voice verbs! No wonder we’re always at war with one another. And our politics? Of course, we see the world in terms of “us” and “them”; of course, we see social change in terms of class warfare. It’s the Golden Rule after all: she who has the gold, rules. Nonetheless, most of us are resigned to this state of affairs. It’s just the way things are. How could it be otherwise? Easily! And the fact is, it wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t necessarily always have to be this way. Many ancient languages had another voice which linguists call the Middle Voice . The middle voice is ideally suited to model situations where relationships are between equals and where action is reciprocal. Linguists disagree about the place of the middle voice in the evolution of language, but it is at least possible that the middle voice preceded both the active and passive voices. Modern linguists struggle to understand the middle voice. Conditioned by their own active/passive logoi , they want to understand this verb form as somewhere in between the active and passive poles. Hence, the term “middle voice”. In fact, the middle voice has nothing to do with its active/passive cousins. It is a completely different way of viewing the world. The middle voice verb form describes an action that impacts both subject and object simultaneously; or it describes a reciprocal relationship between two co-subjects who are also co-objects. That’s what process is; that’s what an event is. Anything else is just an abstraction. Analogy : If the active voice is the voice of the future and the passive voice the voice of the past, then the middle voice is the voice of the Present. Imagine what our world would look like if we viewed it in terms of reciprocal relations and omnidirectional events! Would that change the way the world is? Or would it just enable us to see it as it really is? Both. We’d see the world through a different filter, and in turn, we’d most likely act quite differently in such a world. How do we talk about love using active and passive verbs? The best we can come up with is something lame like, “Mary and Paul are in love with one another.” This turns love into a static state rather than a raging fire. The middle voice, on the other hand, is ready-made to describe the relationship between Mary and Paul in a way that does it justice. The active and passive voices describe the same event in the same way; they merely reverse the point of view. The middle voice defines that same event in an entirely different way. The active/passive voice sees the world from the outside; the middle voice sees the world from the inside: objectivity vs. subjectivity. Thus, we have two opposing world views: an active/passive view and a middle voice view. One sees the world in terms of will, struggle, domination, and power; the other sees the world in terms of mutuality. One is the syntax of war, the other of peace. One is the syntax of cause and effect, the other of evolution. One is the syntax of past and future, the other of the present. Unfortunately, however, most Western languages have lost the middle voice. Where the middle voice has been retained (e.g. Icelandic), it has been forced to co-exist with its active/passive cousins, and it no longer conveys the strong sense of reciprocity it once did. The poverty of an active/passive voiced language and the lack of a strong middle voice alternative is not just a linguistic problem; it’s a philosophical problem and ultimately a theological problem. One way to understand ‘the Christian project’ is as an attempt to reintroduce middle-voice consciousness to the world. Of course, I am not suggesting that the New Testament authors, much less Jesus himself, were budding linguists. Yet, they understood that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way folks viewed the world and, with incredible insight, they sought to change that view. When you view events and the actions that constitute them in terms of unequal, unidirectional power relations, it becomes easy to abuse or exploit your neighbor...and impossible to love her as yourself. Even today, certain sub-cultures will brand you a sucker or a wimp or a ‘goodie two shoes’ if you do not take advantage of the weaker folks in your orbit. “It’s just business!” Active/passive-voiced languages conflict with values like justice and kindness. It is difficult to inculcate an ethic of justice, reciprocity and love in folks who view the world according to the active/passive paradigm. In this sense, ‘bad language’ could be seen as humanity’s ‘original sin’: the second commandment is just an extension of the first. Christianity, especially in its early stages, sought to replace the active/passive world view with the world view that we are calling ‘middle voice consciousness’. In the Lord’s Prayer, for example, we read, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” 12 centuries later, Francis of Assisi built on this insight: “It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.” Whatever we do, we do to ourselves to the same degree and in the same way and at the same time as we do it to others. That goes for positive actions like forgiveness and negative actions like violence. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Why? Because in middle voice consciousness, your neighbor is yourself! Beginning with Leo XIII (1878 – 1903), modern Popes have railed against economic injustice, but they have done so from the middle voice perspective of universal love ( agape ) rather than class consciousness. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Spring 2023 Table of Contents Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. 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< Back Regime Change & Democracy Jan 21, 2025 "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them…” Democracy is in fashion these days. Virtually every country in the world declares itself to be ‘democratic’, if not a democracy per se . A few even include the word in the nation’s name; for example:  Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)  Democratic Republic of the Congo  People's Democratic Republic of Algeria  Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka  Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal Were I asked to list 5 countries that exemplify ‘democratic values’, my list might differ from the above…considerably. Democratic regimes understand that all political power ultimately rests with the citizens of a nation. Therefore, the true test of any ‘democratic’ institution is its willingness to cede power back to the people, even at the expense of its own institutional survival. It is one thing to oscillate between Party A and Party B within a stable political system; it is another to dissolve or transform that ‘system’, i.e. the institutions of government themselves. Regime change is not a matter of counting ballots; it is about changing hearts. Successful change necessarily involves the 3 immutable values: Truth, Justice, Beauty. Regime change requires that these values be reapplied if not redefined. Conversely, it is when these values are questioned or probed that we know that the possibility of regime change exists. “What is Truth?” asked Pontius Pilate. Today, we ask, “Where is Truth?” The world is drowning in information but how much of that information is useable? Where do we go for information we can trust? Here too, we’re not just talking about Fox News vs. MSNBC. We’re talking about hip hop, Bible study, Shark Tank , Tik-Tok, TED Talks, and Podcasts. Drowning in unverified and mostly unverifiable information, we rely on the source for authentication. For the first time in recent history, at least, Americans do not rely on common sources of information. There is no longer any final court of appeal where ‘facts’ are concerned. Likewise, Justice for most Americans is no longer whatever the courts (formal and informal) say it is. Over the past 70 years, courts have no longer merely applied existing cannons of justice; more and more they are being asked to answer the question, “What is just?” Intriguingly, many high profile cases ask the court to define or redefine Justice in particular contexts. Often these cases seem to involve irreconcilable conflicts between previously accepted values: civil rights vs. states rights, security vs. free speech, the rights of the accused vs. the victims, the scope of the right of self-defense, etc. These sorts of contractions are a sign that we may need to rethink our basic premises. Finally, Beauty, the most subjective of the three. The character of every historical epoch is reflected in its art, but the nature of that reflection can usually be assessed only in retrospect. ‘Regime Change’, at least the way I’m using the term, must in the main be non-violent; any violence must be incidental. Regime Change cannot be imposed; it must be the organic outgrowth of shifting popular consensus. Yes, I'm familiar with this concept - it's often called the "3.5% rule" and was popularized by Erica Chenoweth has proposed that analyzed historical nonviolent protests and civil resistance movements, finding that no movement that achieved active participation from at least 3.5% of the population failed to bring about significant change. However, it's important to note that this isn't a magical threshold that guarantees success. The research was specifically focused on nonviolent movements aimed at regime change or territorial independence. The effectiveness of this percentage could vary significantly depending on the type of social change being sought and the specific context. Would you like to explore any particular aspect of this research or discuss how it might apply to specific social movements? Are there any examples of successful regime change in modern times? How about Eastern Europe c. 1989? Most of the Warsaw Pact countries and many of the former Soviet Republics accepted displacement with barely a shot fired. Ironically, this may have been communism’s finest hour. These moribund regimes allowed themselves to be replaced by systems reflecting extremely divergent ideas and values. The people spoke and it was not the place of the state to pretend otherwise. The options were clear: step aside as demanded or give up any pretense to ever having been democratic. Another example? Brexit. Even though the major political parties were against British Independence, it happened anyway. The people spoke…and the deep state stepped aside and the map of Europe changed. Yet another example? Yesterday’s (January 20th) peaceful transition of power in the United States. Of course, this is scheduled to occur, or not, every 4 years, but I think most readers will agree with me that this time it feels ‘different’. In retrospect, things changed the moment Donald Trump descended the escalator in Trump Tower (2015). For 10 years, a war has waged on TV screens, PTA halls, and barrooms but for now at least the outcome seems ‘settled’…and not just because Trump won the rematch. It is the way Trump won that makes this regime change and not just the usual quadrennial reshuffle. Let’s cut out the noise – voter turnout, 3rd party candidates, etc. Let’s just talk actual votes for the Republican and Democratic nominees. In 2020, the Democratic nominee (Biden) received 7,000,000 more popular votes than the Republican nominee (Trump). In 2024, Trump received 2,000,000 more votes than Harris, a swing of 9,000,000 votes or about 6% of the total votes cast. Oversimplifying, a net 3,000,000 Biden voters switched to Trump while another 3,000,000 simply stayed home (50,000 in the City of Philadelphia alone). The manner of Trump’s victory is key here. Trump did not ‘pick-off’ a few ‘battleground states’ as expected. He won them all, some by big margins. In fact, Trump improved his position relative to the Democratic nominee in every one of the 50 states and in the District of Columbia, and I was hard pressed to find a single demographic category where Harris improved over Biden. For all practical purposes, Trump improved his position with both genders, all ethic groups, all income groups, all educational levels. That is what makes this election a Regime Change. (The last time this happened was in 1932, inaugurating a half century of the New Deal.) Now the forces of the Ancien Regime have two choices: (1) Join the political process and seek to influence, if not control, the evolution of public policy, or (2) Withdraw, metaphorically speaking, into the mountains to wage guerrilla war. For the sake of the nation and the world, I hope they choose Door #1 . Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back The Old Testament David Cowles Apr 5, 2023 “Even the most ardent atheist will find a treasure trove of information and wisdom in this anthology.” Once upon a time, nearly everyone in Europe and the Americas was either a Christian or a Jew. The smattering of atheists, agnostics, and members of other faiths did not move the needle. In those days, it was customary to read the Bible’s Old Testament, searching for spiritual guidance, ethical norms, historical details, and cosmological insights. Today…not so much! Theological Judeo-Christianity, distinguished from its Cultural and Ideological variants, is in free fall. For better or worse, most of us no longer look to the Old Testament for spirituality, ethics, history, or cosmology, and so we don’t bother with it at all. This is a mistake! Even the most ardent atheist will find a treasure trove of information and wisdom in this anthology. Recently, a contemporary British philosopher and atheist, Julian Baggini, published The Godless Gospel . In part, this book is a synthesis of the works of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - with all references to ‘matters divine’ (e.g., God) scrubbed out. I wish this author would do the same for the Old Testament. Now that you’re here, can I give you a quick tour? I promise to have you home in less than five minutes: We’ll begin with Genesis – NOT! Even though I think a persuasive argument can be made that Genesis is at least compatible with contemporary astronomy and evolutionary biology, it’s way too much of a hot potato…and I promised to get you home. Instead, we’ll begin with the first successful and fully documented slave rebellion in Western history ( Exodus ). Job One : Escape from Pharaoh! Follow Moses and Aaron as they first ignite, then curate national and class consciousness in the Hebrew community. Then we’ll follow these newly liberated people during their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness of Sinai. This is as close as we’re ever likely to get to an historically documented version of Rousseau’s State of Nature . Our physical scientists have their precious laboratories; but what do social scientists have? They have the Sinai. With no tradition of self-government to fall back on (they were slaves), the Hebrews spent 40 years in the desert, learning to live with one another and with nature. Job Two : Devise a Social Contract ( aka a Covenant): it’s called Torah . Rousseau & Co. speculated about the choices that folks would make in the State of Nature . Why speculate? The Hebrews painstakingly recorded their entire ‘state of nature’ experience in the Pentateuch (the five books of Moses); they presented their conclusions in 613 mitzvah (rules of the road) that cover everything from the periodic redistribution of wealth to the washing of pots. It’s a masterpiece of social engineering. (Lenin & Mao, eat your hearts out!) Any study of Western political philosophy must begin here. Now the Hebrews are camped at the edge of Canaan, the promised land…but there’s a problem: How do we take possession of this land from its more numerous, more prosperous, and better armed inhabitants? A polite, ‘we’re here now, please step aside’ probably would not have worked; neither would a full-frontal assault. So Joshua devised a plan to exploit the social injustice embedded in Middle Eastern societies during the second millennium (BCE). He identified Jericho’s potentially revolutionary class and mobilized it with the promise of a new society, founded on the principles of Torah : i.e., robust human rights (including the right to property), a resilient social safety net, and periodic redistributions of wealth. It wasn’t a hard sell! Job Three : Capture the megalopolis known as Jericho, the Gotham of its day. Joshua used spies and ‘outside agitators’ to gather intelligence and sow dissent. Then over the course of seven days, he ‘acted out’ the key provisions of the Torah in history’s first recorded performance of Guerilla Theater. Ultimately, the city fell (‘its walls came tumbling down’) without a single ‘shot’ being fired. According to the Imperialist Playbook, once you conquer a country, you immediately co-opt its existing institutions. Your goal : “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” There was every reason for Israel to follow this path…but it didn’t! It stayed true to Torah and delivered on its revolutionary socio-economic agenda…unlike political parties today. Instead of seizing the reins of authority, Joshua cut them. Instead of controlling the levers of power, he smashed them. But now what? Job Four : Govern! Govern without a king, without an oligarchy, without an aristocracy, without a ruling class (lie quiet, Marx), without a legislative body. How then? With a succession of charismatic leaders, designated ad hoc as Judges; in other words, Anarchism . You’re laughing, “How long could that experiment possibly have lasted? Let’s see, the Paris Commune of 1871 lasted 71 days, but I’ll be generous, I’ll give this ‘new’ model government six months…tops.” But you would be wrong, as usual. (Is it ‘best practices’ to insult your readers? Probably not…but I promised to get you home…now in two minutes.) So let it go. Six months was not a very good guess. The correct answer: 250 years! Then what? Well, here’s where I say, “Pick up the book and see for yourself;” but I do have time left for a preview of coming attractions: Sit in on a decades-long debate between anarchists and monarchists, at the close of the period of Judges. Follow the triumphs and tragedies of Israel’s kings, ultimately leading to secession, conquest, and exile. Hear nearly two dozen ‘populist prophets’ speak truth to power. Meditate on the wisdom of Ecclesiastes , made famous by the Byrds, and of the eponymous Book of Wisdom . Revel in the gorgeous poetry of Psalms and Songs . How’d I do? Did I keep to my timeline? You’ve got some reading ahead of you. Enjoy! Image: Francis Danby, "The Delivery of Israel out of Egypt," 1825. Oil on canvas. Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, U.K. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

The Bible doesn’t tell us what John saw, but it does tell us that the breaking of the seventh seal was followed by half an hour of total silence. Why? < Back What Did John See? David Cowles Oct 15, 2022 The Bible doesn’t tell us what John saw, but it does tell us that the breaking of the seventh seal was followed by half an hour of total silence. Why? In the Christian tradition, the climax of cosmic history is the advent of the New Jerusalem, the triumph of the Kingdom of God. Paul said it best: “Then comes the end, when he (Christ) hands over the kingdom to his God and Father, when he has destroyed every sovereignty and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet . The last enemy to be destroyed is death…When everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subjected to the one who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all .“ (I Cor. 15: 24 - 28) That’s the climax. But, of course, there are mini climaxes all along the way, events best described as the eruption of the eternal Kingdom of God into history. Just glance over at God’s ‘Highlights Reel:’ Creation Exodus Torah Incarnation Resurrection Ascension Pentecost Not too shabby! Is it too much to hope that some NFL team might draft God in the first round? I wonder if he needs an agent? The final book of the Christian Bible, The Book of Revelation (sometimes called Apocalypse ), is a book of climaxes . The ultimate cosmic climax comes in the final chapter (Rev. 22): “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end…I am surely coming soon. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” This is the climax, not of the Book of Revelation , but of all Scripture, of all history, of the universe itself; but the climax of Revelation itself comes much earlier (6:1 – 8:1) with the breaking of the seven seals. That is Revelation ’s pivot point. While John of Patmos (the self-proclaimed author of Revelation ) looks on, the Lamb (Christ) opens the seals. As each seal is broken, an aspect of reality is revealed: First Seal – Crown (authority) Second Seal – Sword (power) Third Seal – Scales (judgment) Fourth Seal – Death and Hades Fifth Seal – Martyrdom Sixth Seal – Cosmic Catastrophe John “watched (and listened) as the Lamb broke open” each seal in turn. Each seal brought new and terrifying sights and sounds: a voice like thunder, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, Death and Hell itself, the blood of martyrs. Then, with the breaking of the sixth seal, “there was a great earthquake, the sun turned as black and dark as sackcloth, and the whole moon became like blood. The stars in the sky fell to Earth like unripe figs shaken loose in a strong wind. Then the sky was divided, like a torn scroll…” But even this is still just preparation for the great event yet to come, the breaking of the seventh seal, the fulcrum on which Revelation balances. The first five chapters (Rev. 1 – 5) brought us up to the breaking of the seals. In Chapter Six, the first six seals were broken. Chapter Seven specifically prepares us for the climactic breaking of the seventh seal. No doubt, the breaking of the sixth seal is a tough act to follow. What can the Lamb possibly do for an encore? What do you think? What do you think happened when the seventh seal was broken? Write your own ending to cosmic history! Ok, spoiler alert , here goes: “When He (Christ/the Lamb) broke open the seventh seal, there was silence in Heaven for about a half an hour.” Not what you were expecting? We are told that John of Patmos ‘watched’ as each of the first six seals was broken, and his watchfulness was rewarded each time with a fantastic vision. Undoubtedly, John watched as the seventh seal was broken as well. The Bible doesn’t tell us what John saw, but it does tell us that the breaking of the seventh seal was followed by half an hour of total silence. Why? It is finished! The sound and the fury of life is spent. Now it is time to learn what, if anything, it signifies (Macbeth). The seventh seal is like the seventh day (Sabbath), the seventh year (Sabbatical), the seventh cycle of seven years (Jubilee). It inaugurates a period of life-affirming rest. (Imagine, a religion whose highest value is rest – Requiem Aeternam !) Silence speaks ‘louder’ than any ‘sound’ ever could. Revelation is not lacking in special effects. Normally, we experience sound against a background of silence; in Revelation, we experience silence against the cacophony of the Apocalypse. Silence becomes figure. Consider the final chorus ( Amen! ) of Handel’s great oratorio, Messiah . Midway through this varied but bombastic summation of the ‘greatest story ever told,’ the orchestra and the chorus suddenly fall silent and stay silent for several measures. This is the pivotal musical moment corresponding to the pivotal moment of salvation history in Revelation . The ’rest’ in Handel’s Amen! is one of the most profound moments in all of western music. Is this the effect John of Patmos was going for? Perhaps, but we have not yet answered the question, “What did John see ?” He saw something, even if that something was nothing (e.g., the abyss). Whatever John saw, it must not have been anything like what he was expecting. For 30 minutes he stared in silence. And he was not alone; his silence is echoed by the angels and saints attending the Lamb. Could it be that the seventh vision was so profoundly shocking that no one, human or angelic, could manage to eke out a single sound? So, shocking that long afterwards, recalling in tranquility all his visions, John still could find no words to express the seventh? What about you? What do you think John saw? In any event, with the breaking of the seventh seal, our story must be done. Nothing more than a short doxology could possibly be needed to bring the story of the Bible to its momentous close, right? Well, not according to John of Patmos. He needs 15 more chapters to get to “Amen! Come Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22: 20) Whatever for? Not that these 15 chapters are boring…far from it! These are the chapters that casual readers usually think of when they think of Revelation . This is the time of trumpets, scrolls and bowls, the time of plagues and beasts, and even a dragon. It is the age of the Antichrist. Undoubtedly, these are the most violent 15 chapters in all of scripture. What can be going on here? To answer that , we’ll need to skip just a bit ahead, 1,750 years ahead that is. Prior to 1848, European revolutionaries believed that Utopia lay just behind the veil. Properly align the political (democracy) and economic (socialism) stars and Utopia will emerge almost immediately from the shadows, where it has been lingering for millennia, waiting to be born. This was the tacit assumption behind Enlightenment sociology. Do we still believe some version of this today? Karl Marx knew better. So did Engels and Lenin. They understood that Rome was neither built nor destroyed in a day. Political and economic asymmetry is deeply ingrained in our Atlantic culture. By the time Marx appeared on the scene, the euphoria of 1776 and 1789 was gone. The rosy optimism of Kant, Hegel, and the Utopians had been dimmed by the harsh realities of power politics . This was neither the bourgeois republic of Franklin, nor the ‘minimal state’ of the Bakunin. The United States was headed toward a civil war, partially fought to defend the institution of slavery, while France was still in the throes of a series of restored monarchies, self-proclaimed empires, revolutionary councils, and state organs of terror. Marx et al. saw that the anciene regime would not go away quietly. The founders of modern communism anticipated a tumultuous transition. They called it the Dictatorship of the Proletariat . Just as the Church was the vanguard of Christianity, so the party would be the vanguard of communism. Sidebar : We all know how that worked out, don’t we? The proletariat ended up being the object of the dictatorship rather than its subject. Being in the vanguard is never easy. Today, we rightly find fault with some of the church’s behavior. Well and good, but charity asks us to remember that other vanguards have fared no better. This insight of Karl Marx (1848) was shared by John of Patmos 1,750 years earlier. Living toward the end of the first century and/or at the beginning of the second, John did not have the luxury of hoping for a peaceful transition of power. He knew exactly how high a mountain needed to be climbed, and he knew that could not happen without blood and tears. But he never doubted that the world would get there eventually. A ragtag bunch of fishermen and itinerant preachers from Galilee, a section of the empire disdained both by Rome and by Jerusalem, would overcome the mightiest political, economic, and military power in the history of planet Earth. Of course! What else? Image: Matthias Gerung - Ottheinrich-Bibel, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 8010. Page 287r: John's Vision of Heaven, Revelation 4:1-11, 5:1-14. Public Domain. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. 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< Back Home Alone “Macaulay Culkin is ‘every boy’ and his Home Alone family is ‘America’s family’ – except it’s not!” David Cowles Another season of holiday specials has passed, but it was reassuring to see that the Home Alone movie franchise remains alive and well. In addition to being immensely entertaining, these films prompt some ‘AT ( Aletheia Today ) worthy’ questions, beginning with, “How do we come to know about the world we live in?” Seriously? Isn’t the answer obvious? We know about it because we live in it! Living is knowing, right? Well…maybe not: Imagine you’re a toddler. You’re certainly living in the world…but how much do you really know about that world? On the mappa mundi you drew for your Park Avenue therapist, 60% of the ‘canvass’ was taken up by your house and yard. The scrub pine at the corner of your lot was the tallest landmark, and your so-called ‘caretakers’ were pictured as giants. You are in the world, but your knowledge of that world is rudimentary at best. But come on! You're a toddler; you’ll learn, right? How? By living, of course. But if our knowledge of the world came from living in it, our maps would look more like Escher than Euclid! Things would recede geometrically from here and now. Bostonians could be forgiven for mistaking the Connecticut River for the Mississippi. Once upon a time, it’s possible that people did learn about the world by living in it…but not now! Today we learn about the world, not from our experience of that world but from representations projected at us by the media. Roland Barthes called such images mythologies . What’s a family and what’s it like to live in one? Turn on the TV and find out! Most of us grew up in families; many of us live in families now, but we don’t trust our experience. For our ideas about family, we rely on television and the movies. The contemporary American family has been defined for us by shows like Leave It to Beaver , The Simpsons , and Modern Family . Of course, we don’t live on the set of a TV sitcom. My own dad was less like Phil Dunphy than he was like Sir Robert ( Downton Abbey ), but I never expected to grow up like Prince Charles. I might have hoped to grow up like Luke Dunphy. Confronted with these images, we have two options: either (1) we ignore actual experience and imagine that our own families are ‘just like’ these sitcom families, or (2) we honor our experience and accept that we live in ‘failed families’. I think I do a bit of both, but either way, we do it to our detriment. Today, our social scientists are focused on the twin phenomena of Entitlement and Privilege . Our media diet certainly reinforces both. But it sets our socio-economic expectations as well. Macaulay Culkin is ‘every boy’ and his Home Alone family is ‘America’s family’ – except it’s not! The McCallister family is rich. Rabbit rich! They are unapologetic ‘one-percenters’. They live in a McMansion in a posh Chicago suburb. In 2023, the estimated price tag was a mere $2,800,000. Plus, the family can afford (money and time) to take an extended vacation in Europe. (Two vans to the airport; parents fly first class.) Both parents work, but the nature of that ‘work’ is posh-vague. Suffice to say, neither works in a sweat shop, coal mine, or cube. Economists estimate that in 2024, a family would need an annual income of at least $750,000 to support such a lifestyle. Yet, the Home Alone franchise encourages all of us to imagine ourselves Growing Up McCallister . Nice work if you can get it. The McCallister Life is the way life’s z’posed to be. It’s the way all of us were meant to live. According to Bernie Sanders, our actual lives fall short because our patrimony has been stolen from us by greedy robber barons. Sadly though, most of us locate the fault, neither in the stars nor in the social system, but in ourselves. “What’s wrong with my parents that they did not provide me with the McCallister lifestyle? What’s wrong with me that I cannot provide that lifestyle for my own children?” These questions seem ‘natural’, if self-denigrating, but they are anything but. They contain anaerobic assumptions that will not survive exposure to oxygen…or sunlight. First, the questions assume that the McCallister lifestyle is within the reach of median members of society. Of course, there are Families McCallister, and in a sense, any family could be a McCallister Family (they could hit on a scratch card, for instance), but such outcomes are at best loosely related to the skills, efforts, abilities, or virtues of the beneficiaries. Somebody’s got to win life’s lottery, but, Immanuel Kant and Bernie Sanders notwithstanding, not everyone can win. That’s not how lotteries work. Second, and even more perniciously, the questions assume that the McCallister lifestyle defines ‘the good life’. It is good to live in a mansion in a monochrome neighborhood. It is good for siblings to have their own rooms (and not to share). It is good for families to spend the holidays in Europe. Sez who? The consequences of these hidden assumptions are nothing short of ‘socially catastrophic’. Think I exaggerate? Think again! We have decided to view life in terms of winners and losers. That’s problematic at best. Do winners earn immortality? Then what’s the point? We have told all participants that they will win or lose based on their performance on a ‘standardized test’ called childhood. What the players don’t know is that their answer sheets are shredded the minute they are turned in; no one will ever even look at them. Winners and losers will be determined instead by a secret algorithm unrelated to test scores. After a suitable interval, our beloved founder, Gordon Oliver Day, enters the exam room to announce the results. James Astor – winner; Jonathan Baskin – loser; and so on through the entire roster. (Note: there are many more losers than winners.) After tears of grief, the losers are left to mourn: “I’ve let myself down, and not just myself, but my parents, my coaches, my teachers and any future spouse(s) and children.” After tears of relief, the winners begin to compare notes and quickly realize that they did not all perform brilliantly on the test; they begin to intuit that something else must have intervened in the selection process. Their euphoria turns to insecurity…or even guilt. In the down-under film Hunt for the Wilderpeople , the 12-year-old lead says, “I didn’t choose the Skux (gangster) life; the Skux life chose me.” Kevin McCallister might have said the same thing about the Posh life. So, we’ve managed to create a value system in which we are all designated ‘losers’, at least in our own minds. Not easy to do but we’ve done it. Brilliant! I’m not done! I’m not rich, but I’m not poor either. I have a ‘nice’ lifestyle; I’m ‘satisfied’. But it’s not the McCallister lifestyle. So I am dissatisfied with being satisfied, and I take every opportunity to mimic the Family McCallister. Some people ask, “What would Jesus do?” I ask, “What would Kevin McCallister (or his parents) do?” So, I buy a house bigger than I need…or can afford, and I take the family on a trip to Europe, even though I have no interest in things European. These are the things one does if one wants to think of oneself as an honorary McCallister...or Dunphy. Like everyone else in the game, I was dealt an average hand. It was all I needed. But I squandered it by trying to live someone else’s life. Looking back, I wish I had paid more attention to the Rolling Stones : “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time, you just might find, you get what you need.” Image: Home Alone. 20th Century Fox. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to Yuletide 2023 Previous Next