tortminder – Page 21 – Pat’s Answers Blog

The Warrior Code

In a world of chaos, gender confusion, divisiveness and stress where the prevailing motto seems to be “Mea Est” (where’s mine?) would that it became possible to return to a time of morality and honor.

Honor is a concept that has, somehow, fallen out of favor in our society. There was a time, not that long ago when part of the definition of being “a man” had much to do with the ascribing to and striving for moral excellence. Our republic was founded by men who lived by the code handed down, in some respects, from the Spartan warriors.

Warrior Ethos

I will always place the mission first

I will never accept defeat

I will never quit

I will never leave a fallen comrade

Honor is the idea of a bond between an individual and a society as a quality of a person that is both of social teaching and of personal ethos, that manifests itself as a code of conduct, and has various elements such as valor, chivalry, honesty, and compassion. It is an abstract concept entailing a perceived quality of worthiness and respectability that affects both the social standing and the self-evaluation of an individual or institution such as a family, school, regiment or nation. Accordingly, individuals (or institutions) are assigned worth and stature based on the harmony of their actions with a specific code of honor, and the moral code of the society at large.

There are still some institutions that follow this code of morality and honor. One of them is the College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, Missouri, (an institution well worth researching). Another is the Citadel, (known as the West Point of the South), located in Charleston, South Carolina in 1842.

The cadets at the Citadel follow “The Honor Code” cadets do not lie, cheat, steal, nor tolerate those that do. The code is based on Core Values:

Honor

First and foremost honor includes adherence to the Honor Code of The Citadel. A cadet “will not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate those who do.” The commitment to honor extends beyond the gates of The Citadel and is a life-long obligation to moral and ethical behavior. In addition, honor includes integrity; “doing the right thing when no one is watching.” Finally, honorable behavior includes exercising the moral courage to “do the right thing when everyone is watching.” The Honor Code is the foundation of our academic enterprise.

Duty

First and foremost duty means to accept and accomplish the responsibilities assigned to me. At The Citadel, my primary duty is to perform academically and then to perform as a member of the Corps of Cadets and the campus community. I accept the consequences associated with my performance and actions. Once I have held myself accountable for my actions, then I will hold others accountable for their actions. Finally, duty means that others can depend on me to complete my assignments and to assist them with their assignments. Duty is also a call to serve others before self.

Respect

First and foremost respect means to treat other people with dignity and worth – the way you want others to treat you. Respect for others eliminates any form of prejudice, discrimination, or harassment (including but not limited to rank, position, age, race, color, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, physical attributes, etc.). In addition, respect for others means to respect the positions of those in authority which include faculty, staff, administrators, active duty personnel and the leadership of the Corps of Cadets. Finally, respect includes a healthy respect for one’s self.

The College of the Ozarks has a similar code.

In a world of chaos, gender confusion, divisiveness and stress where the prevailing motto seems to be “Mea Est” (where’s mine?) would that it became possible to return to a time of morality and honor.

The Constitution and its meaning

“[T]he ignorance of the people,” he said, “is the footstool of despotism.”

You could argue that there are two basic visions for America: the Hamiltonian and the Jeffersonian. The former is nationalist, calling for centralized power and an industrial, mercantilist society characterized by banking, commercialism, and a robust military. Its early leaders had monarchical tendencies. The latter vision involves a slower, more leisurely and agrarian society, political decentralization, popular sovereignty, and local republicanism. Think farmers over factories.

Both have claimed the mantle of liberty. Both have aristocratic elements, despite today’s celebration of America as democratic. On the Hamiltonian side we can include John Adams, John Marshall, Noah Webster, Henry Clay, Joseph Story, and Abraham Lincoln. In the Jeffersonian camp we can place George Mason and Patrick Henry (who, because they were born before Jefferson, could be considered his precursors), the mature (rather than the youthful) James Madison, John Taylor of Carolina, John C. Calhoun, Abel Upshur, and Robert Y. Hayne. The Jeffersonian Republicans won out in the early nineteenth century, but since the War Between the States, the centralizing, bellicose paradigm has dominated American politics, foreign and monetary policy, and federal institutions.

Jeffersonians hold a “compact theory” of the Constitution:

“The constitution of the United States of America . . . is an original, written, federal, and social compact, freely, voluntarily, and solemnly entered into by the several states of North-America, and ratified by the people thereof, respectively; whereby the several states, and the people thereof, respectively, have bound themselves to each other, and to the federal government of the United States; and by which the federal government is bound to the several states, and to every citizen of the United States.”

Under this model, each sovereign, independent state is contractually and consensually committed to confederacy, and the federal government possesses only limited and delegated powers—e.g., “to be the organ through which the united republics communicate with foreign nations.”

Employing the term “strict construction,” many decry what we call “activist” federal judges, insisting that “every attempt in any government to change the constitution (otherwise than in that mode which the constitution may prescribe) is in fact a subversion of the foundations of its own authority.” Strictly construing the language of the Constitution meant fidelity to the binding, basic framework of government, but it didn’t mean that the law was static. Among legitimate concerns, for instance, was how the states should incorporate, discard, or adapt the British common law that Blackstone had delineated.

We understand the common law as embedded, situated, and contextual rather than as a fixed body of definite rules or as the magnificent perfection of right reason, a grandiose conception derived from the quixotic portrayals of Sir Edward Coke. “[I]n our inquiries how far the common law and statutes of England were adopted in the British colonies,”

In other words, if you want to know what the common law is on this side of the pond, look to the operative language of governing texts before you invoke abstract theories. Doing so led Founding scholars to conclude that parts of English law were “either obsolete, or have been deemed inapplicable to our local circumstances and policy.” In this, they anticipated Justice Holmes’s claim that the law “is forever adopting new principles from life at one end” while retaining “old ones from history at the other, which have not yet been absorbed or sloughed off.”

What the several states borrowed from England was, for the Founders, a filtering mechanism that repurposed old rules for new contexts. They used other verbs to describe how states, each in their own way, revised elements of the common law in their native jurisdictions: “modified,” “abridged,” “shaken off,” “rejected,” “repealed,” “expunged,” “altered,” “changed,” “suspended,” “omitted,” “stricken out,” “substituted,” “superseded,” “introduced.” The list could go on.

The English common law, accordingly, wasn’t an exemplification of natural law or abstract rationalism; it was rather the aggregation of workable solutions to actual problems presented in concrete cases involving real people.

Having been clipped from its English roots, the common law in the United States had an organic opportunity to grow anew in the varying cultural environments of the sovereign states.

St. George Tucker, a scholar who studied Blackstone’s legal thoughts as they related to US jurisprudence

had a knack for aphorism. “[T]he ignorance of the people,” he said, “is the footstool of despotism.” More examples: “Ignorance is invariably the parent of error.” “A tyranny that governs by the sword, has few friends but men of the sword.”

Reading Tucker reminds us that for most of our country’s formative history the principal jurisprudential debates were not about natural law versus positivism, or originalism versus living constitutionalism, but about state versus federal authority, local versus national jurisdiction, the proper scale and scope of government, checks and balances, and so forth. To the extent these subjects have diminished in importance, Hamilton has prevailed over Jefferson. Remembering Tucker today can help us see the costs of that victory.

Sedition

McRaven does not argue that President Trump has done anything wrong in particular, but that he has no respect for America’s values. These values, McRaven declares, involve a commitment to “help the weak and stand up against oppression and injustice” around the world.

Retired Admiral William McRaven has published an op-ed in Friday’s New York Times titled, “Our Republic Is Under Attack From the President,” urging that Trump be removed from office — “the sooner, the better.”

McRaven’s op-ed gives a military imprimatur to what President Donald Trump has already likened to a “coup,” as Democrats attempt to impeach him with barely a year to go before the next presidential election.

” These men and women, of all political persuasions, have seen the assaults on our institutions: on the intelligence and law enforcement community, the State Department and the press. They have seen our leaders stand beside despots and strongmen, preferring their government narrative to our own. They have seen us abandon our allies and have heard the shouts of betrayal from the battlefield. As I stood on the parade field at Fort Bragg, one retired four-star general, grabbed my arm, shook me and shouted, “I don’t like the Democrats, but Trump is destroying the Republic!”

The admiral, well-respected for his role in overseeing the operation to kill Al Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden in 2011, argues that senior military leaders have lost confidence in the president and feel he is a threat to the nation.

The admiral is unwilling to wait for the 2020 presidential election to see a change of power. He declares (emphasis added): “It is time for a new person in the Oval Office — Republican, Democrat or independent — the sooner, the better. The fate of our Republic depends upon it.”

Moreover, McRaven makes no reference to voting, or elections — or even impeachment.

McRaven might want to consult with a competent attorney regarding Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and U.S. Code § 2384. Seditious conspiracy

Transgender policy in America

The goal of the LGBTQ ideology is not to help a child or adult who is going through confusion regarding gender. It is to do away with the understanding of the factual existence of Males and Females.

Jack Martin

A very serious deception challenges the very moral culture of our nation. The 60’s ushered in the if it feels good do it mentality. Colleges began to indoctrinate, rather than educate back then. And we are now reaping the fruit of that in every aspect of our culture.

Through out history Homosexuality was considered abnormal sexual relationships, until the 60’s illegal in almost every state in our nation. Sodomy defined as sin as stated in the Bible. But with the sexual revolution that began to change, combined with the total destruction of the Biblical family of Father Mother, husband wife roles.

With time the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual movement has expanded to the place where most of America can repeat LGBTQ. But as dangerous as the first three letters in that are, its the fourth, Transgender that perhaps poses the most danger. For years we heard Christians don’t believe in Science.

Issues like global warming, abortion, etc was echoed through liberal gatherings.

But time and scientific discovery have debunked both the extreme global warming views, and the point in which a life begins in the womb. 4D ultrasounds clearly show a viable living child, not a tissue blob. Evidence shows the point where pain is felt. But when it comes to gender dysphoria, that defies all logic.

Biology teaches 2 sexes, and I will call them 2 genders. Even in our languages, we refer to Masculine gender, Feminine gender, and Neuter gender. The latter referring clearly to inanimate items, not people. XY was always a male, XX was always a female. But now we say gender is different, its what you feel like. Forgive my honesty but that is insane.

Research shows that 98 percent of boys and 88 percent of girls who go through a period of dysphoria in their puberty years come back to full agreement with their biological sex by or near their 18 birthday. With the frontal lobe of the brain, not being fully developed until some time near age 25.

We don’t find it strange that a child during those years will one day be a firefighter, and the next a doctor or lawyer, and yet when a child has confusion caused by any number of natural or event induced feelings we want to rush to change their so called gender pronouns, clothing, and begin medications to begin a change in their development. When they are legally qualified we rush to have gender re assignment surgery. And then when they continue to be confused and depressed and commit suicide, we blame it on those who tried to warn them.

In many states it is illegal to counsel a person back to a Biblical or or heterosexual mindset. Even has a growing number of transitioned individuals are de-transitioning back to their biological sex.

The goal of the LGBTQ ideology is not to help a child or adult who is going through confusion regarding gender. It is to do away with the understanding of the factual existence of Males and Females. It is a direct assault on Gods declaration that He created mankind male and female with the intent that they marry for a lifetime and procreate. Replenishing the earth.

When quality research shows gender dysphoria for what it is, a state of confusion for a multitude of possible reasons, the LGBTQ supporters simply resort to names like homophobe, hater, or they falsely show bogus research that they claim discredit true evidence.

Teachers are forced in schools ( Pasco County Florida presently ) to use false pronouns, and false names to identify students. They are threatened if they wont oversee such things as girls in boys locker rooms. ( See ProtectPascoChildren.org ) and in regards to sports, girls are wrongly positioned to lose sports scholarships, championship honors, or even suffer horrible injuries at the hands of boys who are confused over their gender.

This battle will shape the future of our nation, and our Supreme Court will ultimately decide. Pray for them to love mercy, do justly and walk humbly before the Lord.

The Deep State is real…and it IS watching you

We were hoping that President Donald Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” would involve the firing (or indictment and conviction) of rogue members of the deep state who couldn’t care less about the Constitution and run their agencies like their own unaccountable fiefdoms.

So far, the president has managed to cut back on a lot of regulations and reign in otherwise benign agencies from implementing willy-nilly all sorts of onerous new regulations that cost businesses and consumers lots of money but don’t really accomplish much other than to make government bigger.

But the real deep state power lies in the intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and they continue to run roughshod over statutory law and our basic rights as Americans.

As reported by CPO Magazine, that includes the FBI — yes, the same one Barack Obama politicized and James Comey ran:

According to a new declassified ruling from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), FBI personnel systematically abused National Security Agency (NSA) mass surveillance data in both 2017 and 2018. The 138-page ruling, which dates back to October 2018, was only unsealed 12 months later in October 2019. It offers a rare look at how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been abusing the constitutional privacy rights of U.S. citizens with alarming regularity. The court ruling is also a stinging rebuke to the FBI’s overreach of its ability to search surveillance intelligence databases.

This could be the FISA court’s ‘revenge,’ so to speak, for being taken advantage of by the Comey-run FBI in which judges on the court were allegedly intentionally mislead by FBI agents seeking surveillance warrants for 2016 Trump campaign officials — over bogus “Russian collusion” charges.

CPO Magazine noted the key elements of the FISA court ruling:

— Judges found that FBI employees improperly searched data that had been collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

— Those abuses amounted to accessing NSA surveillance data so FBI analysts and employees could examine the online communications of Americans, to include family members and fellow FBI employees.

— In all, the FISA court suspects there were thousands of improper queries made, which were done without any reasonable suspicion or expectation of a crime or risk to national security.

— The improper searches also did not delineate between foreign intelligence targets and U.S. citizens.

If we can’t trust our intelligence community we are in serious trouble

The FISA court itself operates in secret; it must because it operates as part of the intelligence community and examines secret evidence in making a determination as to whether or not to grant federal agents surveillance warrants.

But the court most often hears cases regarding foreign surveillance targets — not Americans, which isn’t unheard of, just rare. What makes this ruling all the more significant is the fact that the court came down on a federal agency — even more rare.

“Simply put,” CPO Magazine noted, “the data was available to search, and the FBI willingly took advantage of every opportunity to query the NSA database. For example, FBI employees routinely used mass surveillance data to investigate potential witnesses and informants.”

In 2017, the FBI conducted more than 3.1 million searches of that surveillance data compared to a paltry 7,500 searches combined by the NSA and CIA. That’s really problematic, officials note, because the surveillance data is only supposed to be accessed and searched if there is a reasonable suspicion of crimes underway or a clear national security risk.

There is also this. Americans have to be able to trust government officials in the FBI, CIA, and NSA because nearly all of their work is conducted in secret, with only moderate congressional oversight.

The FISA court got burned by James Comey’s FBI — obviously more than once, and who knows for how many years.

Sources include:

CPOMagazine.com

TheNationalSentinel.com

Prayer for Saturday 10/19/2019

“True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”

“When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom.” -Proverbs 11:2 KJV

All of the good qualities ethical humans are to posses have an element of humility within them. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control … you can’t have any of these things without humility.

C.S. Lewis defined humility this way, “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”

Archangel Uriel

In the Bible, Uriel is believed to be the angel that came to Noah to warn him about the coming flood.

Archangel Uriel is the archangel of wisdom and philosophical illumination. The name Uriel is pronounced YUR-ee-el and is translated “God is Light” or “Light of God.”

Being the embodiment of the Light of God can mean many things, so throughout history, Uriel’s angelic functions have been diverse and varied.

Uriel belongs to a group of angels known as the illuminated seraphim.

Archangel Uriel is one of the most powerful of all of the archangels, with the special ability of being able to reflect the Light of God.

God’s light is unimaginable to humans, so the closest that humans can get to being in the actual presence of God is to have His light reflected upon us by Archangel Uriel. For this reason, Uriel is also known as the ‘Angel of the Presence.’

Though angels do not have actual genders, Uriel has been most often portrayed throughout history with masculine features. He is associated with power, lightning, thunder, fire, and electricity.

Generally, Archangel Uriel is depicted as a guide, carrying a scroll on which you will find answers to all of your questions concerning your life path, and a staff or a bright lamp which he uses to guide you on your life path.

In the Bible, Uriel is believed to be the angel that came to Noah to warn him about the coming flood.

He is in the same category of historically important archangels as Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel. Like these high energy archangels, Uriel is also referred to as St. Uriel.

Uriel is a high energy spiritual being who acts as a special conduit of God’s great wisdom and illumination, working selflessly to illuminate all of humanity.

Archangel Uriel offers unconditional service to all of humanity, sharing the light of wisdom that illuminates all human souls.

Uriel isn’t mentioned in canonical religious texts from the world’s major religions, but he is mentioned significantly in major religious apocryphal texts. Apocryphal texts are religious works that were included in some early versions of the Bible but today are considered to be secondary in importance to the scripture of the Old and New Testaments.

The Book of Enoch (part of the Jewish and Christian Apocrypha) describes Uriel as one of seven archangels who preside over the world. Uriel warns the prophet Noah about the upcoming flood in Enoch chapter 10. In Enoch chapters 19 and 21, Uriel reveals that the fallen angels who rebelled against God will be judged and shows Enoch a vision of where they are “bound until the infinite number of the days of their crimes be completed.” (Enoch 21:3)

Raising Competent Kids in an Incompetent World

It’s probably no surprise that the young people of today aren’t particularly independent. Not only does the “education” system take great pains to mold them into a bunch of terrified, follow-the-herd automatons, society, in general, doesn’t force them to do much for themselves either.

By Daisy Luther

I’ll never forget when my oldest daughter came home for summer vacation after her first year of college. She told me that her younger sister, age 13 at the time, was much more mature and competent than many of the kids in her student apartment building. “I had to show a bunch of them how to do laundry and they didn’t even know how to make a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese,” she said.

Apparently they were likewise in awe of her ability to cook actual food that did not originate in a pouch or box, her skills at changing a tire, her knack for making coffee using a French press instead of a coffee maker, and her ease at operating a washing machine and clothes dryer.

One girl, she told me, kept coming to my daughter’s apartment for tea and finally my daughter said, “I can’t afford to keep giving you all my tea. You’re going to have to make your own tea in your apartment. The girls said sadly that she couldn’t because she didn’t have a tea kettle. She was gobsmacked when my daughter explained how to boil water in a regular cooking pot for making tea.

At long last, my daughter admitted that even though she thought I was being mean at the time I began making her do things for herself, she’s now glad that she possesses those skills. Hers was also the apartment that had everything needed to solve everyday problems: basic tools, first aid supplies, OTC medicine, and home remedies.

This got me thinking about how life will be when disaster eventually strikes.

If the country is populated by a bunch of people who can’t even cook a box of macaroni and cheese when their stoves function at optimum efficiency, and who can’t figure out how to make something as simple as tea in a different cooking vessel, how on earth will they sustain themselves when they have to not only acquire their food, but must use off-grid methods to prepare it? How can someone who requires an instruction manual to operate a digital thermostat hope to keep warm when their home environment it controlled by wood they have collected and fires they have lit with it?

And honestly, we can’t just blame the young people of today. We know that these types of skills aren’t taught in school, so where have their parents been? Why hasn’t this generation been taught to cook, clean, problem-solve, and handle money? People often praise my kids for being competent but the things they do should not be that unusual. If you never give a kid responsibility or show them how to create a workaround, how do you expect them to magically be able to “adult” just because they hit some arbitrary age?

Let’s look at some less dramatic, but more likely, situations. This isn’t even about prepping, per se, but about life skills.

Job Loss

In the current economy, it might not even be as cut and dried as job loss – the new generation may never find work at all. When you have little-to-no money, cost-cutting efforts in order to get by requires certain skills and adaptations to stay fed and clean. Your kids need to know how to:

Cook inexpensive, nutritious meals from scratch using pantry basics
Do laundry by hand and hang it to dry
Get from point A to point B using public transit or – gasp – by walking
Budget limited money so that the most important things are paid first
Mend and repair items instead of replacing them

Power Outage Due to Natural Disaster

We’ve all seen the aftermath of hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, and super storms. California just lost power for over a week to “prevent” wildfires.

Your kids should be able to:

Keep warm, whether that means safely operating an indoor propane heater, using the wood stove/fireplace, or bundling up in a tent and sleeping bags in the living room
Keep fed – they should have enough supplies on hand that they can stay fed at home for at least two weeks without leaving the house: cereal, powdered milk, granola bars, canned fruit, etc.
Keep safe – they need to understand when it’s dangerous to go out and about and they need to have basic self-defense and weapons-handling skills.
As well, they need to understand the dangers of off-grid heating and cooking, such as the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning in un-ventilated rooms, and to know how to lessen these risks.

Illness and Injury

This can happen anywhere at any time. Keeping a cool head when someone is ill or injured is the absolute most important step towards a good outcome. My kids both took babysitting courses and First Aid courses to further their money-making abilities as young teens, but the skills learned there go much further than bandaging a toddler’s scraped knee. Kids should:

Take a course in First Aid, CPR, and anything else applicable that is offered. The more you know, the calmer you are able to remain during a crisis.
Have a good basic First Aid kit and know how to use everything in it. Yes, that means “wasting” a few supplies by tearing them open and going through the use of them.
Know some home remedies for various common illnesses: teas for tummy aches, treatment for flu symptoms, how to soothe skin irritations, and how to care for a fever.
Have some basic over the counter medications on hand, like pills for diarrhea, pills for indigestion, and pain relievers.

Automotive Safety

An astonishing number of young adults don’t know how to drive. Fewer people than ever are getting their driver’s licenses.

Back when I was a kid, the most exciting thing in my teenage life was getting behind the wheel of a car, getting a learner’s permit when I was fourteen, and having that permit turn into a real driver’s license on my 16th birthday. This was freedom, baby!

Now, many kids couldn’t care less if they ever learn how to drive. Instead, they rely on public transit or friends and family members that drive. It’s one thing if you live in a major metropolitan area, but in places with lower populations, it seems that this is a vital skill. In order to transport yourself to work and school, or to help out in the event of an emergency, it seems to me that kids should know how to:

Drive. Not only an automatic transmission but also a standard transmission
Change a tire. You don’t want your teenage daughter stranded on the side of the road at the mercy of whoever stops to help. My daughter was not allowed to drive the car until she demonstrated her ability to change the tire with the factory jack.
Perform minor maintenance, like checking the oil and fluid levels, filling up the washer fluid, checking tire pressures and topping them up if needed, and changing the windshield wiper blades. I have a background in the automotive industry, so I also taught my daughter how to change the oil, which is nice to know, but not absolutely necessary.

And finally, what about day-to-day life skills?

I was truly surprised when my daughter told me about the lack of life skills her friends have. I always thought maybe I was secretly lazy and that was the basis on my insistence that my girls be able to fend for themselves. But it honestly prepared them for life far better than if I was a hands-on mom that did absolutely everything for them. They needed to realize that clothing does not get worn and then neatly reappear on a hanger in the closet, ready to be worn again. They need to understand that meals do not magically appear on the table, created by singing appliances ala Beauty and the Beast.

Here are some of the life skills that kids should have gained before leaving the nest:

How to use basic tools for repairs
How to cook a healthy meal
How to grocery shop within a budget and have healthy food for the week ahead
Speaking of that, how to budget in general, so that they don’t have “too much month and not enough money”
How to clean
How to do laundry, including stain removal
How to think for themselves and question authority
How to manage their time to get necessary tasks accomplished by the deadlines
How to tell the difference between a want and a need
How to be frugal with utilities and consumable goods
How to pay bills
How to stay out of debt (not easy with the college credit card racket that you see on campuses across the country and rampant student loans)

Competent kids turn into competent adults.

The more they practice these things under your watchful eye, the more competent they will be when they set out on their own. We all want our kids to be successful and independent and this is on us as parents. Don’t allow your kids to become crippled by a world that babies them in the name of convenience.

What are some of the skills you’ve taught your kids to prepare them for the real world? Have you witnessed some young adults who seem to be struggling to handle real life? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

SOURCE:https://www.theorganicprepper.com/raising-competent-kids-in-an-incompetent-world/

Say now Shibboleth

“Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right.”

A Shibboleth is any custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another. Shibboleths have been used throughout history in many societies as passwords, simple ways of self-identification, signaling loyalty and affinity, maintaining traditional segregation, or protecting from real or perceived threats.

The term originates from the Hebrew word shibbólet (שִׁבֹּלֶת), which literally means the part of a plant containing grain, such as the head of a stalk of wheat or rye; or less commonly “flood, torrent or ford” (possibly a head of grain by a water ford).

The modern use derives from an account in the Hebrew Bible, in which pronunciation of this word was used to distinguish Ephraimites, whose dialect used a differently sounding first consonant. The difference concerns the Hebrew letter shin, which is now pronounced as “S” (as in shoe).

“Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.” -Judges 12:6 KJV

A “furtive shibboleth” is a type of a shibboleth that identifies individuals as being part of a group, not based on their ability to pronounce one or more words, but on their ability to recognize a seemingly-innocuous phrase as a secret message.

Which brings the question; “Are you a traveling man?”

Mercy and Grace

“For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.” -G.K. Chesterton

Mercy (Middle English, from Anglo-French merci, from Medieval Latin merced-, merces, from Latin, “price paid, wages”, from merc-, merxi “merchandise”) is benevolence, forgiveness, and kindness in a variety of ethical, religious, social, and legal contexts.

The concept of a merciful God appears in various religions, including Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Performing acts of mercy as a component of religious beliefs is also emphasized through actions such as the giving of alms, and care for the sick.

“Mercy” can be defined as “compassion or forbearance shown especially to an offender or to one subject to one’s power”; and also “a blessing that is an act of divine favor or compassion.”

Hebrews 4:16 says, “So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.” Grace and mercy are similar in that both are free gifts of God and both are dispensed absent any merit on the part of the recipient. Grace is the favor of God, a divine assistance. Grace is what one receives that they do not deserve while mercy is what one receives when they do not get that which they deserve.

“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.” – 1Peter 2:9-10

In Islam the title “Most Merciful” (al-Rahman) is one of the names of Allah and Compassionate (al-Rahim), is the most common name occurring in the Quran. Rahman and Rahim both derive from the root Rahmat, which refers to tenderness and benevolence.

The Hebrew word for mercy is Rachamim which is always in plural form so that it literally means “mercies”. “Mercy includes showing kindness to those who don’t deserve it, and forgiving those that deserve punishment.” Mercy is one of the defining characteristics of God. Exodus 34:6 says: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”

“For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.” ―G.K. Chesterton