The Dark Hallway of Unintended Consequences

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 God is not always in the lobby.


Picture a bright, sunny lobby with posters on all the walls. The inhabitants there are fairly tribal, hailing each other with pride and solidarity. Once you get in the lobby, there is only one way out, through a door to the dark hallway of unintended concequences. The hallway is full of more doors. It's scary and complicated, a place of woe and pain, so many denizens of the lobby just stay there. It's a happy place of rigid moral rectitude, a place where simple bromides make so much sense, they couldn't possibly be wrong.

The fetus/child poster

Take for instance, the poster that reads, "It's not a choice, it's a child." Wow, how could anyone refute that? If you believe in God, that little fetus is a reflection of God. Killing it is murder, and fighting it is to offend God, the Creator of all mankind. Even that gooey blob of protein has the DNA of a human being in it. I admit, for a believing Christian, it's a tough call to defend Choice. It was the dark and spooky doorways that caused me to solidify my stand for the right to choose. Let's look at a few of them.

A]  People who will fight to the death to maintain their own religious freedom willingly impose their faith on others who would fight to the death to not have another's faith shoved down their throats.

B]  People who scream about the government requiring "poisonous" vaccines and silly masks would force a 13-year-old child to carry her father's baby to term.

C]  An adult woman in an abusive relationship will bring a child into the world who will also be abused and maybe raped. If she manages to separate from the abuser, she may have to fight in court for years to protect her children. If she is not very strong and turns to drugs and alcohol for support, her kids will suffer and may repeat the family pattern.

D]  Women who need an abortion for an unviable fetus are brought to the edge of death and harm because hospitals don't want their physicians to spend the next ten years in prison for murdering a "child."

E]  Restrictions get tighter and even bizarre as politicians outdo each other in "moral rectitude" in order to capture the Evangelical vote. Soon women and girls will have to report their menstrual periods to a government database. Laws forbidding going to another state for an abortion could force checkpoints at every road and street that cross a state line, and every woman or female teen will have to prove that there are no pregnancies in the car. Pregnant women will have to avow that they are not going for an abortion.

F]  Lives, relationships, careers, marriages, finances, education of teens and women are thrown into a wood chipper while a woman who doesn't want dids is forced by the government to carry a child to term.

G]  Trafficked children will have to give birth to their abusers' babies.

H]  A woman who has a genuine miscarriage will have to prove in court she didn't have an abortion. The [sychological torture of this is unquantifiable. Doctors may have to affirm in court that a fetal loss is a miscarriage.

I]  Fetuses will be found in dumpsters, capsites, and gas station toilets again.

J]  For political gain, men in governmental office will declare birth control sinful. Birth control will be only available on the black market. Women using it will risk going to jail, their lives ruined.

I'm not sure if I've covered all of the unintended consequences of banning abortion. It basically adds up to cruelty. The psychological, spiritual, political, and physical harm done will greatly outweigh the inspirational stories of babies that grow up to be great folks. It will become a swamp of sewage-infested hypocrisy, of medical and psychological torture. Women will die. But that's OK for MAGA. Collateral damage. Just like with gun rights. Charlie Kirk informed us that a few teens and kindergartners here and there must die in order for Americans to have gun rights with no common sense restraints. God forbid we have restraints on our wants.

Adam and Steve?

Speaking of cruelty, let's look at another poster. "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." Both testaments of my Bible assure me that homosexuality is an abomination before God (Lev. 18:22; 20:13; Rom. 1:26, 27; 1 Cor. 6:9-11). It pretty much sounds like they are all perverts and degenerates. Don't even bother trying to convert them. As a young Christian, I expressed my own discomfort with these relationships with some pretty harsh words. But as I grew in the love and grace of God, and as I read the stories of those discovering their predilections, and mainly as I met some of the really brilliant, nice gay people, some who are nicer than I was as a new Christian, I realize that "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" (another poster in the lobby) wasn't going to orient me to the mind of God concerning those folks.

Again, it's none of the state's business how these people resovlve their choices as to whom to love. It's none of my business or yours. I don't know why some folks are gay and most are not, but I believe them when they tell me the attraction began at a young age. It was not always a case of choosing, of a warped personality for these young people. 

Of course, some are perverts. So are plenty of straight people, some of them pastors or choir leaders. Some perverts are policemen, firefighters, beloved politicians, or royal princes. That should not condemn the lot.

When Jesus told us that the "kingdom is within you" and "my kingdom is not of this world" He meant what He said. Christianity is a relational religion of invitation, not legalism, laws, and simplistic aphorisms. The medieval church had all sorts of ghoulish ways to convince people about what they should believe. They burned heretics alive, buried them alive, drowned them, and imprisoned them. Jesus taught compassion, humitity, inclusiveness, yet the church leaders found so many cruel ways to exclude those that wouldn't submit to total control. We were told to take His message of redemption and love to the streets, not cruels rules and gruesome laws. "Do unto others as you would have them do to you," and "love your neighbor as you love yourself," are not simple adages. Those commands define the heart of the Father's religion from the firs to the last verse. Ignore them at your own peril.

No More "Woke" in the Military

Does anyone know what "woke" means? Basically, it refers to anything that the Democrats stand for. So a man who knows nothing about how the military is run is put in charge to basically reform the entire US fighting force into the image of the president who also kknows nothing about how the military is run. Any wokish is summarily fired. The military is now tough. No more silly DEI. No more transgenders. The US will now be sronger, more uniform, and less diverse than any time in history since WW II. Now the white male can reign supreme and show the world how the alloy of diversity just weakens the steel.

A]  People are fired for no reason. Pensions disappear, college plans for kids are upended, vacations cancelled, promotions put on hold, homes go into foreclosure, war heroes are insulted and dismissed, years of expertise go out the door, creativity of women, Blacks, Latinos, and other minorities is quenched. 

Military people generally lean conservative, but perhaps now the president and his chief troll have poked a stick in a nest of hornets. A dictator needs a loyal military that will shoot lethal bullets at whatever he points to. He doesn't need tens of thousands of really angry military people who have been pushed out of their careers.

What is Wisdom?

Many years ago, I met a former gangster in a church I attended. He was raised in egregious neglect by drug-addicted parents, but God had His hand on Ronnie as a toddler. He told me he learned names of animals as he sat on the floor watching a vision, just like a movie. As the animals would go by, a voice in his head told him the names. Nevertheless, he grew up in the gang world. One day he had a shoot-out with a foe. When he saw the bullet holes in his jacket, he turned himself in to save his life. Of course, he spent time in prison, but he found Christ there, and thus attended the church where I met him.

One day he asked me, "If you were to define what wisdom is, what would you say?" I hemmed and hawed and probably said something like, "Well, it's seeing a problem and instinctively knowing how to solve it. The Bible says that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom." 

Ronnie told me that God once gave him a definition of wisdom. "It's seeing a circumstance and working through it until you see the very end of the matter." I had to think that one over a bit, but I could eventually see that we often act hastily on circumstances driven by culture, education or lack of it, lusts and addictions, thoughtlessness, biases and prejudices, etc. One thing I've noticed about a lot of Republicans is that they don't want to think a matter through. They want to identify with the maxim, the aphorism that you can put on a flag or banner. They are mystified and enraged that Democrats have to make everything so complicated.

Just do it! We don't care how! We want this or that done and any president or offical who can make it happen is our hero!

Well, you got your wish MAGA. You got your wrecking ball. First he wreced all the values and international projects that made America great and respected in the world. Then he wrecked all the offices and guidelines that kept corruption at bay. Now he's wrecking the White House to put in a grand ballroom fit for a king. It would take a book to describe what that man has wrecked. 

It will lead to nothing but pain and ruin for everyone, including all the MAGA enablers and donors. That will be the end of the Trump story. And it will end. Trumpworld will end, and history will spit on its grave.


Check out my website where you can read my memoir for free, "The Legacy: A Memoir of Personal Guidance and Korean War Sabotage." www.janetksmithpersonal.com


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