The machine is grinding us into food for the system. Fight the system. Fight the machine. It is not your friend. 
Sage Against The Machine.
Libertarian Humanist.

Day 95: But he stole your iMac! On the road to mayor.

September 12, 2015

    That picture pretty much says it all.  That's my newest friend walking out the front door of my office in the middle of the night this past Thursday with the iMac in my office. 

We had met earlier in the day, in my office, talking about many things. 

  • How the owner of the apartment building he's squatting in said he could stay as long as he didn't make a mess. 
  • How we might try to arrange a meeting with a group of people to talk about what it's like after getting out of prison with no support system. 
  • How to go about getting a new social security card, while homeless and hungry, because your girlfriend threw it out while you were in prison. 

We talked about many things.  I gave him $10 as he left that day. 

As the "victim" of that kind of crime the natural human tendency is to ask, "How could you do that to me?" "I was trying to be your friend and you were just casing the joint."

That's the flinch reaction.  That's the fight or flight aspect of your brain. 

Get defensive. Get angry. Get sad. 

And that, my friends, is where Jesus comes in. 

Now, before half of you roll your eyes, hear me out.  I'm not talking about the church. I'm not talking about all the rules authority has instilled in the name of Jesus. 

I'm just talking about Jesus the prophet.  He put out so many mind bending concepts and guidances. 

The one that comes to mind in this case is the one all Christian kids learned in Church: "Turn the other cheek." Aka: Be a mark. Be a sucker. Take it laying down. 

Turn the other cheek is pretty much everything America is against.

We are a fighting, often very angry country.  This "turn the other cheek" message almost doesn't compute in the American psyche. 

"Why would Jesus ask us to be weak and to be taken advantage of?"

That's what I love about so many messages Jesus put out. 

You have to think and ask so many questions to try to understand why he wants us to do something that feels so unnatural and maybe even unwise. 

That's the point. 

He is asking us to stop the base instinct of fight or flight.  He's asking us to do something that only humans are capable of doing: stopping and thinking. 

Why did my new friend (and I still consider him my friend) steal my iMac? Here are some ideas off the top of my head:

  • He has no friends. 
  • He has no family. 
  • He has no ID so he can't go to the temp agency to get a job. 
  • He has no money. 
  • He has no running water in the apartment he's squatting in. 

He has nothing. 

What would you do if you were in his place?

I'd venture a guess we'd all maybe do the same thing. 

That's the mind bending awesomeness of what Jesus was saying. 

Forget "eye for an eye." That's what animals do.

Humans have the amazing ability to have empathy, to have compassion, to love, to forgive.  Jesus asks us to be human. Which is being the children of God. 

We must, as a local community, let prophets like Jesus be our guide in finding love and compassion with the little people in our city. 

Will you get taken advantage of? It's quite possible. But Jesus had to die for his compassion. 

So suddenly an iMac doesn't really mean all that much in the scheme of things. 

We can't ignore and despise the weakest in our community. That only makes the problem worse. 

We can't just let the suffering continue to go on right outside our doors. That just makes us animals.  We must be human. We must be the children of God that we are. 

To become truly strong we must, as Jesus told us, become weak, become last. To let the last be first.  This is the only way we can move forward as a community. 

So... What am I going to do if I see him again? I'm going to give him the mouse and keyboard he left behind. 

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