I am trying to keep out of trouble this summer, but it is hard for a natural born trouble maker to do that

It has occurred to me that drinkers like Doc keep out of trouble by drinking! Doc is capable of making comments that get him into trouble, so I can see why he is afraid to commit himself to sobriety. He just too smart to risk being sober is I think the way he sees it. He is very articulate, observant, and his I.Q. has been registered at around 160. He graduated from college. But since then there has been a long decline.
He still has no problem understanding me and my issues and has impressed me as about the smartest guy I have ever had the opportunity to interact with. So why should a guy with such intellectual gifts end up staying drunk all the time?
I suspect that our society does not reward outspoken members and that alcohol and drugs are generally taken up by the rebels. Doc was raised in a very tight German Lutheran community. His parents refused to allow him to attend public school on the grounds that it might tempt into some bad behavior I believe. He was angry but gave in to their fears graciously I am sure. That is how he handles people. He can act very civilized with the most delightful manners.
I had three sons who were all rebels as were their fathers before them, their grandfathers, and great grandfathers. I observed that my father and my cousins took up drinking along with rebellion so I vowed that if I found it necessary to rebel I would not drink. Even my sons have followed pretty much the drinking and experimenting with drugs path to rebellion.
I was quite shocked when my outspokenness and rebelling ways got me in even more trouble than they did my dad. I was incarcerated in a psych ward which is about like going to jail. I was taken twice in my life by armed guard to a psych ward in two different states and I had a heck of a time getting out of both of these locked institutions. I could not just get out. I had to be released.
So from then on I had a record, which is what helped me get incarcerated the second time. Somebody with authority found out I had a record of incarceration. I am afraid I told him since I did not yet realize how foolish that was. But I had such a hard time getting out of there again I never forgot what I ought not to say when interacting with men with authority.
I made a huge splash the first time by getting incarcerated at the University of Utah in my last year of college. Nobody has ever been able to understand how this happened. Nor have they been able to understand what happened while I was in there. But believe it or not, I was in my right mind and I was orchestrating whatever happened to me. I had taken charge of my life the last year I was in college, which it seems you do not do without getting into a lot of trouble. I decided that up to then I would just be an obedient school girl and do whatever was asked of me without making waves. The main thing I did that bothered people was read all the time. But I reserved the right to keep doing that, so nobody was ever able to persuade me to become a pep girl or something like that that I thought might interfere with my reading time. Since I could not be a cheerleader, I told my aunt being a pep girl and cheering for the boys at all the games was too much of a waste of time. So I continued to read.
It is true that reading a lot of books tends to help foster rebellion. You get too many ideas about what is wrong with everything. But I was able to keep myself from rebelling in any noticeable way until I was in my 4th year of college.
My dad had already partied his way out of college after a couple of years or so. His grades were bad, so his dad told him he would not pay for him to go any more. He went home to work on his father's ranch and that is where he stayed.
But my dad was so used to me being so obedient, not drinking or smoking or doing anything that he had done, he did not realize that I was a dyed in the wool rebel just like he was. He was totally shocked when he got a phone call that I was no longer quietly attending classes and making no waves, I was locked up and he and my mother better come north to help decide what was to be done with me.
You would think my dad did not even know what a rebel was, or at least he did not know he had been harboring one right in his own family and had been paying for her college. He acted like he did not even recognize me for what I was. He did not realize that I was now prepared to defy everyone's efforts to keep me behaving well and was going to take charge of my own life and do as I damned pleased.
He had done this. He still got drunk every weekend no matter what his dad did to him after he had to leave college more or less in disgrace. He could take after him with a bull whip. He could yell and shout, but he finally had to accept that he had another alcoholic son, a rebel, somebody who was always going to be in trouble, who would get arrested during his life any number of times. But he was still a smart guy who could run the ranch when he had to, so his father by the time I was born had turned the management over to him, despite his wastrel ways.
The psychiatrists also found out I was one of the worst rebels they had ever locked up. I informed them that I was not crazy and they better not give me electric shock treatment. I did not need it. I don't know whatever possessed my mother and dad to sign for my shock treatment but I think they scared them into it as doctors usually do if they want to do something to you. They try to make out that you probably aren't going to recover unless you do get this treatment.
They had turned my case over to the Intern since he was the only one I would talk to. I didn't like any of the other psychiatrists and almost as soon as they started talking to me, they would make me angry, so I would just shut up and stare straight at them, refusing to say another word. This of course caused them to want to shock me all the more since they were not used to anyone defying them to the extent that I was doing it.
But once I turned loose my rebel personality this is the sort of thing I did to everybody, which was why I would have been ejected from college sooner or later. I was ready for that. I had made up my mind college had no more to offer me. I was leaving. I was 20 years old. It was not going to cost my dad any more money, but do you think I could have told him that?
No, he seemed to think that because I had not given him any trouble by drinking and smoking and that sort of thing he owned me. I was little Miss Obedient he expected somehow to boss the rest of his days. I had already worked for my room and board the last two years of high school in order to go to school in Salt Lake. I had a job for those two years, so I could be independent and go to high school where I wanted to. You would have thought that would have given my dad some clue that I would be able to live independently of him if I left college.
But it seems that the doctors were not going to let go of me that easily. Everybody that I talked to in there were getting electric shock treatments. They just could not seem to bring themselves to agree to let me go without me being shocked. I think they were quite insulted to think I rejected electric shock treatment so indignantly refusing to be persuaded that I was mentally ill. Nor did I accept the psychiatrist's actions who incarcerated me after possibly not even a two minute interview. Why?
Well, he asked me in a very bored way what my problems were. I thought this guy is not interested in why I am leaving the University. I didn't like his attitude. I did not think he would be able to understand any of my reasons for leaving. He was just going to argue with me. So he asked me another question in the most bored uninterested tones possible and I thought to wake him up a little before I walked out of the university forever, and decided not to answer his question. I figured that would jolt him to more awareness, give him a little more idea who he was dealing with. When he hardly even blinked, but continued to ask me in his bored way another question or so I didn't answer those either. I knew that was rebellion to the 9th degree, but I was thinking what could he do to me, I was leaving. I had already done exactly this to the head of my department which was theater and he did nothing. Which was why I felt safe to do it to the psychiatrist. Instead my department head acted like he could not cope with me and wondered if I would go to talk to the school psychiatrist as I was apparently not going to talk to him, as he put it. This busy guy had already kept me waiting for 45 minutes through one appointment he had set up. The secretary finally told me to go home and she would make another. He was a half an hour late to that one and by that time, since I was leaving college I decided I would not talk to him to express my annoyance at his lack of interest. I was performing the second female lead in a play he was directing on the road so he probably wanted to make sure I did not fail to show up for that and thought to foist me off on the school psychiatrist. He surely did not imagine that he would never see me again and would have to replace me in about two days in the play!
No, I wouldn't have done that to any director. I fully intended to perform for the second week in the play, and figured I would be able to finish out the run before I was actually thrown out of college. I had timed my rebellion and exit so I could finish the play. I was also directing a student production of Phaedra and hoped to be able to finish that, too, before I left.
I really did not think of leaving college as a completely insane thing to do. As others came to think of it later. My dad had ordered me to become a school teacher or a secretary or he would not pay, so I had had to take a number of those classes to satisfy him. Now I had decided that I would not be able to rebel and at the same time become a school teacher, so that was out. It had never been my choice or intention to become either, so there my dad was trying to control even what I studied. If it had been my choice I would have left all those classes out and took only the ones I thought would help me become a writer, a playwright, would give me acting experience, directing experience and so on. My dad, naturally, did not think I was being practical, so this was why I was finally rebelling against him. I was tired of him telling me what I could or could not do with my life by withholding financial support. I was now going to tell him to go hang.
So, yes, I knew he was going to be angry. He was the one who was going to act insane. Demented. But I thought I will just have to handle his tantrums when I get to them.
In the meantime the psychiatrist got up and left the room and said he would be back. He didn't come back for a long time, so I decided he wasn't worth messing with any more and I was just going to get to my feet to leave, still thinking I had the right to leave, and he suddenly popped back in and told me I was being taken under guard to a mental hospital. I did not have any choice. It seems he had been scaring up an armed officer and police car. I was to be escorted out of there. I took it that I had now become one of the most dangerous rebels this guy had ever seen at that college. An all out alarm must have gone out, and I was not going to be allowed to get away!
I had just committed an act that was going to get me locked up and nearly killed as it turned out. I came within a hair's breath of losing my life. But did that teach me a lesson? No, it did not. It just made me mad. I thought if this is the sort of thing they are doing to rebels, I had better investigate.
I didn't know it but I had found my life's work.

Going it alone while family is preoccupied: the spirits visit!

My sister Ann in Utah has been affected by her son and wife moving the grand kids she has been tending so long to Texas. While she and my own kids have been preoccupied elsewhere the spirits had a chance to make themselves known in order to cheer me up and otherwise make contact in preparation for my own departure to the spirit world. I have received these visits in dreams for years, and I finally decided that they were just what they seemed to be, visits from people who had gone to the hereafter, which meant that I like a certain small percentage of our populace had inherited this gift. I know my mother had it to quite a degree, as she would always get uncomfortable feelings when someone fairly close to her was going to die. For several days she would talk about this bad feeling and when the person close to her would pass, she would say yes, that is who it was. I soon started identifying similar feelings I would get. I would ask questions and could sometimes identify the general age of the person, even where the passing would take place, and how seriously it would affect people.
I tried to understand how this gift worked, but it just was, and I am actually not sure how it does work. Sometimes the visits and warnings would come in the form of dreams as well as feelings. I would be alarmed and would try to identify the person so I could do something about the coming death if possible, but this seemed not to be the purpose of these warnings. Too much was already in motion. There would be little I could do to prevent the passing. The dream would be more to warn me of an upsetting event to come so I would be be better prepared for it. That also seemed to be the purpose of my mother's dreams.
Now my dreams seem to be more to prepare me for departure. Last night I saw the man who had come to visit me very clearly. It was Pierre, my companion who died of lung cancer about seven years ago, pictured in the above photo with me. He looked very good. He said he had just come in from a long trip with another man I believe to have been his brother. We talked quite a long time in the dream, and when I woke up from the dream in the middle of the night when I had to go the bathroom, I continued to have a sense of his presence which was reinforced when I went back to sleep and dreamed about him again, which will often be the case if a spirit has come into my ken. It will usually be quite a long visit as though to make the contact worth while and to try to get a lot said. I always get the impression that it is quite a process to make one of these visits, so they can't happen very often, and the spirit and I both learn to make the most of them. I also asked a lot of questions. He told me that he had realized that my relationship with him was probably the healthiest relationship I had ever had with a man. He would indeed probably qualify as the love of my life. He was strongly attracted to me as I was to him. Our relationship was physical in a more enjoyable way than my other relationships. The physical relationships I had with others were troubled or pretty lacking or even painful, or else they were extremely short lived or non existent as my relationship with Doc is. So I am glad I managed to have one physical relationship in my life that was as enjoyable as mine was with Pierre.
And it was beset with difficulties also including a split in his personality that I would have to term bisexual.
He said that he planned to reconcile with me after I had become angry with some of his activity away from me, but he developed lung cancer instead and died. He said that he had determined he would give up all such outside activities and would try to concentrate on me exclusively until death. Instead I spent a year with him in severe pain trying to help him get pain medication and help. It turned out that his pain was coming from lung cancer that had quickly jumped into his bones and was causing the incredible pain. He had been a heavy smoker and he paid a terrible price for it.
Doc has been a very enjoyable find for me in many ways, but Doc is very strange guy. He had basically given up women for alcohol. He had apparently been headed that way for a long time, so he never ever emphasized the physical with me. It was always the intellectual side of me he wanted to interact with. We became friends and companions but never lovers. The only way he would have been able to cut himself off from the physical like that was to become quite a bad alcoholic, getting drunk virtually every day.
In my dream Pierre was talking about this and noted that this must leave me feeling rather deprived all the time. I said that it did but I was too old now to really do anything about it. I felt that Doc would die that much sooner if I tried to part from him. I saw no other prospects that would make that move worth the pain it might cause, so I was leaving it as it was.
He said he understood. He said his French was very good now that he had reconciled with his younger brother who also had terminal cancer when Pierre was dying. His younger brother still lived in Montreal where French was the main language. His brother was not as comfortable with English as with French. Pierre said that when I came to the other side he would take me to Paris where I have never been.
When I told Doc this he said I will take you to Paris. I said that would not be enjoyable with you drinking all the time, so I would have to decline. It would, in fact, be impossible for him, he is in such a state of sad neglect, with bad teeth, ripe cataracts, and I don't know what all else that might kill him any time.
In fact, I wondered if Pierre was paying this visit to me to prepare me a little more for his death, as I still don't feel unhealthy, and my health habits are far better than Doc's.
When the spirit world opens up and somebody comes through to you, there are usually many reasons for it that you will not altogether understand at the time, but these are visits that can happen to you because of advanced age. Changes are being manifested through dreams.
So I register the existence of a spirit world through the physical means of dreams. I saw Pierre manifest last night in quite a long visit. I resisted any kind of physical attraction because I am uncomfortable with that when one of us is on another plane. I just tried to get the message behind the visit. I felt joy and happiness. I was so glad to see him. He was always a good guy. Not mean. And always a lot of fun, a great lover of life.
He is not as intellectual as Doc, partly because he came lately to the English language so he did not become the reader required for depth. But he was very musical as Doc is. Again Doc's tastes are more advanced. He favors jazz and classical, but Pierre like country music probably because the songs helped him with the English language. He liked pop, too. He tried to sing everything. When he could sing he was happy. Oh I loved to hear him sing in French. He sounded incredibly romantic. He liked to sing in Italian, too. He had also loved to dance before accidents in the construction business rendered him lame.
So I woke up this morning in a good mood, thinking I would be glad to see Pierre again. Doc cannot complain about what Pierre and I had because he had given up on all that. It was the price he paid for alcohol. I helped Pierre sober up from a drunk I thought might kill him. I also helped him through a previous extensive back surgery before the cancer. And was rewarded for it with his love and gratitude. I knew him when he was sober. The first year he was here I never saw him drunk. There is a big difference in a man when he is sober.
This Doc decided was a gift he was never going to give to another woman. His sobriety. Strange. I suspect he was well on his way to becoming an alcoholic to deal with his first big heart break in his first marriage where he lost his kids, too, and was made to doubt whether they were even his. I suppose he was lucky to survive he took it all so hard.
When Pierre's second marriage to a beautiful woman went bad he said because of him and his behavior and problem, he tried to commit suicide and was found barely alive. He spent several weeks in a psych ward. She still left him and took their child, eventually asking him to sign away his rights to her second husband who was wealthy and wanted to adopt their daughter. So he knew heartbreak as well.
But he was able to come out of it better than Doc did, at least for us to have some precious time. His life was also very complex like Doc's, with three previous marriages compared to Doc's four.
So long, Pierre, I will see you again!

I think it is the Democratic Party and President Obama's next presidential election to lose

From what I read today in the the editorial of the Arizona Republic, owned by Garnett, and a liberal voice, I fear that if the immigration issue is not addressed any better than this by the Democratic party in the remainder of the president's term, Obama's will be a short presidency.
In the wake of SB1070, Arizona republicans are accused of being unkind to our Hispanic population across the board as though we cannot address immigration problems without running too big of risk of upsetting this minority. I feel that has been used as an excuse along with many others for letting the problem get so far out of hand. Many American citizens have gotten very impatient with the idea that we cannot even try to find out if a citizen is an illegal especially if that citizen attracts the attention of a policeman for breaking some kind of law, especially when law officers and property owners on the border are reporting a veritable flood of illegals in recent years. Citizens have nothing to fear. Why should illegals have nothing to fear either just because it might upset them to be checked and it be suggested that their presence was not exactly acceptable if illegal? If illegal immigration is ever going to be restricted something like that is going to have to happen, either at the border, which is where Arizona would prefer it happen, or inland if too many illegals keep coming through. Is that bad reasoning? I don't think so. Is it racist? No, it is an attempt to deal with too many illegals overwhelming the state's ability to absorb them, pure and simple.
Yes, most illegals are going to appear to be Mexican, since Mexico is our border state. I think most of our Hispanic citizens can reason. But if they are citizens they have nothing to fear. It would appear that the democratic party does not want anyone, whether illegal or not, to be checked. For fear those who are not breaking the law might be upset. It also appears they don't want the people breaking the law upset either! So they appear to be favoring a do nothing attitude until the President and congress are ready to act. I think Arizona was patient with that policy as long as possible.
This policy of the democrats opposing every single conclusion about a problem reached by a republican has reached almost ridiculous lengths in Arizona in my opinion. I have long been a democrat, but if the party I belong to fails to address a problem as well as the opposing party I will naturally cross the line and vote for the man I think is doing the best job of dealing with the problem.
I was for example enthusiastic about Janet Napolitano when she ran for governor in Arizona as were a number of other republicans because she was very easily voted into office. She had already made a good impression as Lt. General. I gradually became disillusioned with her as she voted the democratic party line in Arizona and gradually alienated republicans in the legislature when they tried to pass anything that wasn't approved by the democratic party. I am a pro life democrat so any time a democrat goes out of her way to vote against any pro life legislation that comes across her desk I am going to become disillusioned. Arizonans had in general become disenchanted with her but she earned an important position in the newly elected democratic regime which was head of homeland security. I assume the President thought that being the governor from a border state and once popular there, she was a good choice.
But Arizonans were no longer enthusiastic about a governor who appeared to check and see what the party line was before she ventured an opinion. She did not show the ability to think for herself and make waves if necessary when her thinking differed in any way from that of more powerful democrats.
To me this is how an election gets lost, not because of the party in opposition, but because the candidate does not somehow distinguish his or herself with the ability to use the thought process and stand up for her own thinking on the subject.
It has not been very long since the democratic party was taken captive by the pro choice element who made it very clear that this was to be the party that supported abortion rights. Well, what if there were a lot of democrats who disagreed? Too bad, we are in charge now! Who said so?
Needless to say I have been extremely irked by so many in the democratic party caving in so easily to the pro choice crowd and silencing all the voices within the party that disagreed. Anybody that was opposed better find a new interpretation of the so called God's law because some people had risen to power in the democratic party that were even willing to oppose God. All I can say is such pride may goeth before a fall!
To me, parting company with God on this issue was the worst thing that had ever happened to the democratic party, absolutely the worst, because it was not going to take very long for them to convince all the younger crowd now growing up with abortion rights that all the justifications for it were absolutely sound and true. Wrong. The justifications were not sound, the justifications for a violent solution are never sound, but they are tempting. Abortion is a quick fix.
And for the younger crowd the sexual revolution that made abortion a lot more of a necessity was becoming a way of life. To rebel when young is natural, and now there were elders who would satisfy their wildest dreams of rebelling against just about everything that had once been called sacred. This scene reminded me a lot of what Moses found when he came back from fasting and praying in the wilderness. He found his people celebrating and worshiping false idols and the golden calf. Trying to get control of their thoughts and loyalty took a lot of doing and the revelation of the ten commandments God revealed to him from the burning bush.
Thank god, after a few years in which they appeared to be stunned into some sort of agreement, the republicans rared up and began to oppose abortion rights. If you will remember Ronald Reagen, a very popular republican president, did not oppose it. He was not a strong pro life president. I think he was too afraid of losing his popularity with the Hollywood crowd.
I thought one of the reasons George Bush senior lost his bid for a second term is because his platform stood for pro life, but he did not speak about it, promote his stand hardly at all, and the press got it out of Barbara Bush his wife that she favored abortion rights after ten kids with George, and that was highly publicized.
George Bush Junior did not make that mistake in either one of his campaigns for president. He ran pretty hard on his pro life platform, including vetoing any democratic proposals to extend abortion rights while he was in office. His wife did not go on record as being for abortion rights until he was entirely out of office and then she exerted her right to disagree with the president and wrote she believed in abortion rights in her recent book. But she did not disagree with his war in Iraq. Hm, well, I stopped being interested in this woman's thinking right then and there, and decided that she was not the great help I imagined she was in George W. Bush securing the presidency. I thought he won the election on his own integrity concerning the pro life issue and he lost the love of the people by waging the war in Iraq without just cause. I do not think he was with God on this one who abhors war as a matter of pride and senseless killing of anybody.
I happen to believe that the abortion rights issue as an extremely important one when it come to the election of presidents, only the press went pro choice so quickly and so completely this could never be acknowledged or publicized. It was always played down as completely as possible by the press.
And that by the way was when I thought some of the American people also became very disillusioned with the so called vaunted objectivity and integrity of the press. When the Supreme Court made its incredible ruling that legalized abortion, which by the way got more protests from the people than any other decision in history, the press caved in with their support across the land almost immediately. It was very obvious most of the journalists were not going to risk losing their jobs by opposing what had suddenly become legal. Hardly anybody in the press put up any strong objections at all.
Well, thousands and thousands of journalists have since lost their jobs. I just think the press became so shamefully pro choice in such a short time, the readers all woke up to the fact that these guys could be led quite easily. Thousands and thousands of readers were lost when they perceived that the press did not believe in much that was hard at all. The sexual revolution was one thing but the press so willingly supporting the legalized killing of unborn babies was another.
What the press failed to understand was for one thing thousands and thousands of people across the land had been engaged in trying to take care of the children through adoption and other means their parents decided they could not take care of. It wasn't long what with abortion rights, available children to adopt became scarce as hen's teeth. People were having to go abroad to find them. A lot of people were engaged in the work of what it takes to have a policy of pro life, saving all the unborn except in cases of incest, rape, and possible severe birth defects, etc, which are cited now as only 5 percent of the cause for abortion, the rest being for reasons of birth control.
In so many ways I believe the press lost their hold on the loyalty and trust of their readers who became downright disturbed as I was by finding a bunch of columns in their editorial pages that could be said to be nothing else but abortion propaganda over night! I was outraged to find such propaganda almost daily in my newspaper and I wrote pages and pages and pages of protests. I know how the newspapers changed once abortion was legal, and what is more it wasn't long until protests were simply not printed. Mine weren't. My word, I read letter after letter from Arizona's leading abortion Doctor Finley but not any of mine were printed! Planned Parenthood heads were always able to get a letter printed. I remember Ellen Goodman, from the Boston Globe, who had once been a respected national newspaper columnist, actually writing a column about how women should regard a baby they were going to abort. She advised them not to name it or in any way think of it as anything other than 'fetus.' But if the mother was going to keep it then she could be thinking of names for it and all the standard things women do when having a baby that is a 'keeper.' I was so outraged at this column I sent a copy of it to President Bush and his pro life task force, and I received some answers in return.
But I think the press made the mistake of thinking that because they could silence the pro life thinkers and keep them out of their newspapers they were not out there, that they all just went away.
Well, since hardly any of the press held out as pro life, that was a lot of newspaper people for pro life writers to take on. But we battled them for years. The did not print my letters, but I still wrote them, and this is some of the fuel that I use in my continued battle with a press that convinced me if they had to risk their jobs for a principle, forget it. They would just jump on any bandwagon and support it for all they were worth!
This was all quite disillusioning to me to say the least, but I had to take stock along with other pro life holdouts and start figuring out how we could reach the people and build up the belief again that life is sacred that had so rapidly seemed to disappear with the help of the press.
I prayed to God every day to help me with this task, because I know the power of God is very strong. And he can accomplish miracles if the people have faith and are willing to be led by him.
I believe in Moses, oh how I believe in him, but I believe he was a man, a great leader, a great man of God as I believe Jesus was. I think there is no difference between the births of any great men of God, there doesn't have to be if they are willing to listen to and learn the will of God.
It is dismaying to learn how much energy has been expended in conflicts over the nature of Jesus, which I think has not been for our best interests in fighting for good. We are not ever going to be able to convert some people with proof that is based on hearsay, that is what was written which cannot be proved! Why would anyone want a man to be above everyone else in some way that is not natural? I think that everyone has been born with the ability to access the voice of God within, the still small voice that can expand if it is welcomed.
But to require people to believe certain things about Jesus or about a prophet before they are welcomed into the fold is I think counter productive. We don't make progress that way and we don't come together to fight evil efficiently. In Utah I not only had to believe Jesus was divine but I had to believe Joseph Smith was now the only true representative of God on this earth, and the prophets succeeding him, and that everyone on earth had to be baptized a Mormon in order to be saved. In fact, no mother or father can even go into the sacred Mormon temples to see their children married unless they accept all this and become a member. It is no wonder the Mormons have not done very much about abortion when they are constrained to convert so many people to their doctrines in order for them to be saved. Is it really more important to believe this doctrine in order to be 'saved' than it is to save the lives of the unborn? Or at least get people to say they believe it. What does believing it even mean? Yes, in order to live in Utah peacefully and be an accepted member of the church, I need to believe this?
There is not too much difference in what you have to say you believe to be a Mormon than to be a Christian. I have had a number of people since I left the Mormon Church trying to convert me to being a Christian so I could be saved.
I would say, no, I don't believe I have to do that. I don't think I have to say I believe Jesus Christ is divine, the son of God, whatever is required, to be saved.
And so what if all these people are wrong demanding this. What if we could go back and check out Jesus and his life on earth, and what if we found out, as expected that he was a great leader and teacher, that he was willing to lay down his life for us, but no more than that? We ask soldiers to lay down their lives for us. And many do. But was Jesus' life worth more? So it is taught, because he was more than a man. He was what?
I am just saying. I am doing what most Jews by the way would be scared to death to do for fear of what would happen to them, I am questioning Christian perceptions of who Christ was who was a Jew! Well, I don't think Jews are afraid to argue with Jews about such questions, but they are more afraid to argue with Christians who are not Jews.
Now, if you are fairly close to sane, you will let me live for doing that.
Think of my poor Mormon relatives that have to put up with me questioning their Mormon beliefs!
I have not been quite as bold in past years before I was 79!

Sheriff Larry Dever, Cochise Country Sheriff, explains the Illegal Immigration problem in very stark and convincing terms from his own experience!

I thought the following article so illuminating on the illegal immigration problem, everyone should read it!

Meet Sheriff Larry Dever, illegal immigration warrior
By Caroline May - The Daily Caller | Published: 12:12 AM 08/02/2010 | Updated: 5:43 PM 08/02/2010

FILE - In this Monday, April 20, 2009 file photo, Cochise (Ariz.) County Sheriff Larry Dever testifies during a U.S. Senate's homeland security and governmental affairs committee meeting to get local and state perspectives on how they are dealing with violence along the U.S.-Mexico border, in Phoenix. Dever made a statement today regarding the impact on his law enforcement agency after the passage of a new immigration bill SB1070 signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer on Friday, April 23, 2010. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, file)


Cochise County, Arizona Sheriff Larry Dever is not taking the federal government and ACLU’s legal assault on border enforcement in his state sitting down. Dever is one of the sheriffs named in lawsuits seeking to block enforcement of Arizona’s new immigration law, SB 1070.

On July 28, he and another named sheriff, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, publicly denounced U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton’s decision to prevent sections of SB 1070 from becoming law and announced their intent to appeal.

Dever has been outspoken about the need for Arizona to secure its border and enforce the law. Having grown up and lived in Cochise County – a county that borders Mexico — his entire life, Dever has seen the adverse consequences of decades of unchecked illegal immigration
first hand.

Dever told The Daily Caller that immigration at the border was an entirely different beast fifty years ago. “When I was a young boy growing up, there were a couple of guys who’d come up from Mexico each year and they’d work odd jobs as long as anyone had work for them,” he said. “They’d stay with us, they’d eat with us, and then when the season was over they’d go home and you’d see them again the next spring. That was very common, particularly in the more rural areas of Cochise Country, nobody really thought anything about it.”

During his early years as a young law enforcement official, police deputies were actually rewarded for apprehending illegal immigrants. “I became a deputy in 1976 and occasionally we’d run into illegals in the area and we’d pick them up and bring them to border patrol,” Dever said. “In fact, every time we’d bring in illegals they’d give us a box of practice ammunition.”

Dever said that practice stopped in the late 1980s, as the influx of illegals became more concentrated — though by comparison with today’s preponderance of human traffickers and drug smuggling rings, the phenomena was still rather tame.

Dever points to 1994’s dual border enforcement campaigns in San Diego (known as Operation Gatekeeper) and in El Paso (known as Operation Hold-the-Line) as the main reasons Arizona has become the destination of choice for illegal immigrants. “Those places were significant because back then they were the major illegal entry points into the country. There you’d have hundreds line up on the border, storm the Border Patrol and overwhelm them,” he said. “Those two initiatives [Operation Gatekeeper and Operation Hold-the-Line] had the effect of funneling the illegal immigration activity into Arizona and somewhat into New Mexico and parts of Texas, but primarily Arizona…We started getting over run down here, literally thousands and thousands.”

Dever said that the government initially claimed that the influx of illegal immigrants into Arizona was just the unintended consequence of San Diego and El Paso’s border enforcement projects. “I bought that for a time, but any derelict on the street could have told you that when you draw a line in the sand in one place, it will just funnel them into another,” Dever said.

After several days of contemplation, Dever has decided that the lawsuits could actually be a positive for Arizona, if the cases result in victories for the state. And he is certain that the cases will ultimately end up in the Supreme Court.

“What greater chance will we ever have to deliver our message than at this level, in this venue. And God bless the president, he gave us this opportunity to showcase and highlight the deficiencies in the immigration strategy and what is going on at the border,” Dever said.

The Legacy Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization based in Des Moines, Iowa, is financing Sheriff Dever and Sheriff Babeu’s legal defense. They are in the process of raising more money to pay for the defense team at www.BorderSheriffs.com.

E-mail Caroline May and follow her on Twitter

KYL: IMMIGRATION LAW SHOULD STAND

I am inclined to think that the truth lies somewhere in between the extremes of belief

I do believe I could just about alienate everyone with my doubts and conclusions about religion, the law, politics and on down the line. I am sure I just got through alienating many Christian blogger friends by expressing my doubts about the divinity of Christ, but I have expressed that doubt any number of times in my life and sooner or later I was going to get to a point of expressing this doubt in my blog in the interests of being honest, among other reasons. On the other hand I have alienated any number of democrats and other pro choice people by my opposition to legalized abortion, but I have held those views since 1973 and in the interests of being honest and in promoting my views I have come out in both my blog and my videos with my stand.
I have long been a registered democrat, before Roe vs Wade, but very time I read a democrat's pro choice views defending abortion rights, I feel something is now missing that is very important to mankind's survival which is respect for life. I loved the democratic party at one time for its battle to bring equal rights to minorities. I was proud that democratic presidents did fight for their civil rights. That was respect for the sacredness of life, black, white, Indian or Hispanic.
I also think that religions that have promoted the view that life is sacred have served mankind. The Mormons taught me that abortion is wrong. They are very strong in this belief. I believe that bad logic can creep into any system of beliefs or any country's laws or any political party's platform. We have to be watching out all the time for some way that reality has been distorted or something that is bad for people has been championed or turned into law.
If beliefs that aren't well grounded in reality creep into religion it is incredibly difficult to correct them either from the outside or the inside.
For example had not the government insisted that the Mormons had to give up polygamy when Utah became a state we would undoubtedly have so many polygamists that the whole country would be set back years in trying to react, which is what I think people in the government anticipated. As it is, Utah allowed the FLDS to continue with polygamous behaviors, probably because the main church still had the law of polygamy on the books just not practicing and it was too hard for Mormons to go against polygamy in their own state and effectively contain the practice. Nor did the Federal government try to chase down the remaining polygamists in Utah and other places. As long as the numbers remained fairly small, and the main much larger branch of Mormons gave up the practice, they no longer reacted.
I think the reason churches have an incredibly hard time changing their policies is because if the practice in question was claimed to have come about through divine revelation directly from God to the prophet, how could it be explained that God had changed his mind without the church losing credibility and authority?
The Catholics have also had incredible problems in changing any of their policies for the same reason I think. They have come up with a terrible pedofile priest problem because it has been impossible for them to change the law that priests cannot marry. They just keep trying to make the celibate priest policy work. In the meantime the number of Catholics who have surfaced claiming molestation by priests has given the Church a black eye it may never recover from if changes are not made. But on the other hand, the Catholic Church has fought abortion since the third century and they have again and again affirmed their belief that life is sacred from conception to birth.
My view of why the Supreme Court exceeded its authority by establishing legalized abortion when most of the states had never allowed it all these years, is because some people on that court were influenced by the legalizing of abortion in communist countries and may have thought that the poor who could not afford all the children they were having might avail themselves of this relief in our country, but we have to remember that the communist takeover did terrible damage to the Chinese infrastructure just as it did in Russia. I have read a number of memoirs by people who were living at the time of the revolutions and it is mind boggling what happened, especially in China. I would say the communist takeover set China back into the dark ages with all the destruction they did. And millions of Chinese lost their lives, so it is not surprising that the brutal practice of abortion and only one child could have seemed like the only solution in a country that could no longer support any excess because of the destruction done to it.
Read Pearl Buck, the Novel prize winning novelist and writer to know what China was like before the revolution. She lived there as the daughter of missionaries and she learned Chinese and mixed and mingled with the Chinese to an extraordinary degree, so she is a credible historian about that time in China's history. Another memoir I read, "Wild Swans" tells about what happened in the revolution to beautiful ancient China that would just break your heart. I just could not get that book off my mind for weeks after I read it.
But legalizing abortion without giving the people any say about it, any chance to debate the question, any opportunity to stop it, was you might say a takeover of communist style thinking, and any democrat who says to the contrary has not done their homework, they have not read enough history about the proponents of legalized abortion, nor do they show sufficient indignation and alarm about the way it was done here in this country, nor are they addressing the fact that it is a violent solution and that the country is no longer thinking that life is as sacred as they once did before it was passed into law.
With over a million abortions a year America has lost her innocence. And will not get it back until they figure out how they overturn such a law and figure out what to do with the children that result because of it. Once people get used to such deaths among them, it does not take long for them to harden their hearts.
So I have certainly not given up my belief that I should heed the call from God if he thinks I can do something about a serious problem. I did not welcome this job, but in my heart of hearts, I thought well, I am in a position to protest and keep protesting, and not give up, so I am one of the people who should tackle this problem. I believe God does ask very hard things of us. I think all the great prophets and leaders asks the same of those they are leading if they are obeying the commandments of God.
I would say that Christians need to put first things first and save lives. Figure out how to save lives. I do not think whether we believe Jesus is of divine birth or not makes our task of overturning a law that takes the lives of the innocent unborn easier.
I feel I have to be a good fighter in that fight, because it is an important one. I cannot be a slacker. I cannot lose sight of the goal. Millions of innocent must depend on this fight to save their lives. Many more will die before we can possibly hope to change the law. Right now those million lives lost every year is the biggest problem in our country I see that needs to be fixed! It will really take a lot of faith in God's law, Thou Shalt Not Kill, to believe that we need to go forth and try to stop people from doing it. It will take a very strong belief in the sacredness of life.

Is it possible to learn right from wrong without Christian beliefs?

I have always thought that the ten commandments constituted one of the most important revelations given to mankind through the Prophet Moses by God. Although Moses is not claimed to be the son of God as Jesus is he was sufficiently loved by God to receive a revelation in the burning bush. He was one of the most powerful prophets of Israel, to my mind, and like many shamans or religious leaders his connection to God was at times so intense it bordered on the miraculous. It follows perhaps for people to believe that the Messiah whose coming had been prophesied would have even greater powers, but it would not be surprising either that in setting down what happened during the life of Jesus there would be exaggerations and conflicts over exactly what kind of powers Jesus the Messiah had earned through his dedication and understanding of the messages of God.
We can see from all the wars that man's grip on the commandments is not always strong. Evil men have risen to power down through history and those they threatened were forced into war lest their countries be taken over and their people exterminated. But still the ten commandments or Mosaic law has been the foundation of many a country's laws. Such laws have also developed in countries and tribes outside of the range that Moses's teaching could reach. Men have had to come up with such laws in order for there to be order among them and progress. So even in tribes in the jungles not reached by so called 'civilization', laws to live by evolve.
In a country as diverse as ours the belief that Jesus is God incarnate is not quite as important to survival as it might have been when the Church was far more powerful than it is today. When people were severely punished for not believing and expressing it too strongly.
But I would say that adherence to the laws of right and wrong is still very important. Killing, stealing, transporting illegal substances, disobeying traffic laws resulting in endangerment to other people, and so on are laws that people get imprisoned for disobeying. Although at one time belief in the divinity of Jesus was thought to be very important, there are undoubtedly a considerable number who don't believe this now days who will not be arrested or otherwise punished for it. In other words the business of living can pretty much go on without that belief, which suggests to me that this belief is not as important as it was once thought to be. At one time I would say that it was thought to be a far more important belief that all people needed to be 'saved.'
Mormons teach that people need to go one step further than accepting Christ is divine and the son of God, they need to become Mormon, too, in order to be saved.
You will note I have a new blog on my blog list called Sibby Online. I consider this blogger to be a very good conservative writer who is pro life, which is very important to me. I was just reading a blog entry of his yesterday in which he denigrated the Gnostic way of thinking, I believe referring to the belief that Jesus was not the savior, the Messiah whose coming had been prophesied, the only begotten son of God, but just one of the great teachers and leaders the Jews have produced, and possibly only fulfilling some of the requirements of a Messiah. His blog contains many entries on his Christian religious beliefs.
I was very interested in what he feels about the Supreme Court which ruled on Roe vs Wade that no state had the right to deny a woman an abortion, thus opening the door to many more abortions a year than our country had previously allowed.
I would say that he tends to think that Christian beliefs help people to value life, to keep the ten commandments and that the Gnostic way of thinking does not.
I am not sure that I agree. I have been an abortion protester ever since Roe vs Wade since I just thought it was basically breaking the commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" by trying to say that a person in the early stages in the womb cannot really be regarded as a life, and ignoring the fact that it takes blood shed to accomplish an abortion.
But what bothered me about the belief that Jesus differed from every other man in how he was born was this was all so vague. Nobody really knew how this was supposed to have happened. So I thought it was very important that there were documents written in the time of Jesus by people who knew him well claiming that he did not ever teach he believed he was set apart, that he was divine, somehow, that he had been born differently than any other men. These histories report that his mother had a number of children and that at least one of his brothers was revered as a great teacher by Jesus, as good a teacher as himself.
It also follows that when the bible was made up it was decided by powerful church men what writings to include and what not to. The writings included were also 'edited.' All in all there was a lot of opportunity to slant the Bible toward whatever beliefs the church favored.
We have to remember that great Kings claimed to be divine which their followers were very apt to try to believe, but of course, now we can say that all those who claimed to be divine certainly could not be.
But we are much more hesitant to conclude that the divinity of Jesus may have evolved the same way, that by the church claiming his divinity many more people would be apt to accept him and worship him than if he were just an extraordinary man although a great prophet. So it is easy to see why the myth that he was set apart, destined to be the savior of mankind through his unique divine birth grew and grew. Even today there are large numbers of people who might feel quite angry at even being subjected to a discussion about whether this could really be so or not. Which goes to show us how deeply some beliefs can take hold of us, even if they are not ordinary, that is even if Jesus would have had to be conceived and born some unknown way.
As far as we know nobody else could ever have been born that way, but still some people are going to believe this about Jesus. Which I have always found a little alarming, but I found the fact that people would believe Mormon doctrine alarming, too. And that I eventually did not feel I could survive any longer among such people.
I can certainly understand Jewish people down through the ages coming to fear Christians who hated them for being non believers. After the holocaust there was such a climate of fear that I don't believe hardly any Jews dared say what they really thought. They could not be blamed for thinking it was not safe.
Hitler's holocaust surfaced the dark side of Christianity when so many German Christians were rendered powerless to stop the murder of the Jews by a leader the country had allowed to come to power and flourish. But this was not the first time the Jews had been the victims of a holocaust. During the Inquisition and at other dark times Jews suffered severe depletion of their ranks for not being able to satisfy their persecutors as to required beliefs in Christianity.
So I do not think such people are going to be safe until Christians are ready to accept others not believing as they do, even when it comes to Jesus. It may even be in time that they will see they may be more in error than those who disagree. I simply say man is conceived and born one way. We do not know of any other way to man to be born, so if someone says there is an exception the rules of logic would suggest these people are mistaken, that nobody is born any other way, NOBODY. It seems like a simple thing to disagree and say I don't think anybody could be born any other way, but it is not. In centuries past many were killed for disagreeing, called heretics. Is the Inquisition gone from our hearts? Maybe there is still an inquisition in spirit and alive when people are persecuted for not believing.
I began to feel distinctly unwelcome in Utah for not believing Mormon beliefs. I don't think I can be blamed for thinking that that the grip the religion has on that state makes it quite inhospitable if you don't agree. I think twice now about even going there. If that is the way the people are taught, what can you expect? But yet I feel that I had to speak up to try to break the grip Mormons have on this state by dominating it in such numbers. I feel that these people are not living in an enlightened place because of what the church believes and preaches to the world.
People who have not disagreed with them on their home ground do not know what that is like. They create an atmosphere of fear about disagreeing. And that is going to have to be fought in order for those people to be free. To know what being free to say what you want to and think what you want to feels like. It is not the same in other states. You do not have the same freedoms in Utah simply because the church is too powerful. I can imagine what it must have been like to have the Catholic church stronger than governments and countries, one of the most feared body of powerful men recorded in history, during the days of the Inquisition!

Trying to understand two different versions of the life, teaching and death of Jesus of Nazereth in Christian religious history

Following my discussion the other day of how my belief in God originated I found that I had a library book in my possession I had not yet read that deals with the two conflicting versions of the life of Jesus called "Hidden Wisdom" by Tim Wallace-Murphy, a scholar and historian who has written many books about how the Gnostics' version of Christ survived. There were documents in their possession about the life of Jesus that strongly suggest he did not think of himself as the only begotten son of God but as a great teacher who also loved and respected other members of his family who were great teachers. These documents were not acknowledged in the other version first taught by the Apostle Paul and later adopted by what became the powerful Roman Catholic Church. The Gnostics claimed that Paul had not known Jesus and he was misinterpreting his life and teachings by calling him divine and 'the only begotten'.
There was a long period of time where people disagreed with one another almost from week to week about the nature of Jesus, even those who had embraced the belief that he was divine.
The author, Tim Wallace-Murphy says, "Heresy inevitably arises from the exercise of God's gift of free will and the use of discernment in matters of Christian history, faith and morals." Meaning that anyone who came to disagree with the New Catholic Catechism 1990 could be guilty. This catechism states, "The Task of giving authentic interpretation of the Word of God--has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the church alone."
As a child, I could have been accused of heresy because when I first heard the claim that Jesus was the only son of God born of a virgin I protested, saying that could not be so. I did not believe it anymore than I believed some of Joseph Smiths' claims to have seen angels and been given the authority by God to restore the only true church on earth, making it a necessity for all people to be baptized Mormons before they could enter heaven. In fact, I could not even see any reason for God to have only one son, as we were all technically I thought the children of God, and to elevate just one being above everybody else as the son of God was discrimination. And would take away from the idea we were all children of God.
Had I lived during the days of the Inquisition when people were tortured and burned for 'heresy' I might have been proclaimed a heretic even though I was a child.
But when I ran into a discussion of what the Gnostics thought about the nature of Jesus which I did in my reading from time to time, I would think now these people have documents preserved from people who actually knew Jesus. I am sure they are more reliable than those who didn't know him but are trying to interpret his nature through prayer and from what they read and heard from others alone.
I have long thought prayer is subjective when it comes to belief and you will generally get the answer that you want to get. In discussions with Mormon Missionaries they have told me that if I will just pray I will receive the true answer as to whether the Mormon religion is so. I said I would probably never receive the answer you do because prayer is so subjective. I could understand why young Mormons born to devout members of the church would receive the answer that the church was true. If they did not get that answer this might involve going against their parents and causing a lot of trouble for themselves.
So I thought that it was necessary to use common sense and all kinds of historical documents as well as prayer to receive an answer closer to the truth just because prayer was too subjective, and information coming through prayer alone really could not be proved one way or another.
In fact, I thought that doubters caused the Catholic Church to go into a long history of cruel suppression and even severe punishment for those who could not be coerced into accepting their version of Jesus. A lot of people were going to say they believed Jesus was divine if saying he was not was going to get them charged with heresy. But the history of the Inquisition alone makes the claims of the Church more dubious I think.
In fact I am a little hesitant in the present time to say that I do not believe in the divinity of Jesus to certain people, not wanting to cause trouble for myself.
I have had this argument, however, with a number of people bent on converting me to a belief in the divinity of Jesus, saying I could not be saved without that belief. I have read the books they gave me but still had to go back and say, no I still do not accept it. And they have had to give up on converting me to their version of Christ without which they claimed I could not be saved.
But I understand where they are coming from having been born and raised in a state from which missionaries went all over the world trying to convert people to the only true church on earth without which they could not enter heaven. The Christians who wished to convert me to the belief that Jesus Christ was divine were representing a much longer history than Mormonism had. Until I left the Mormon Church I thought I was a Christian since I revered the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, but found that I differed from most Mormons also in at least one aspect, I did not believe in the divinity of Jesus. I have asked many questions of believers in his divinity how they thought this could have come about. I just could not even imagine it.
I could see believing that your child had a great destiny on earth and that he would be a very great man but I never could get a clear picture of how those believers thought Jesus could differ in his birth from any other man. As a child thinking of the animals on the farm I would say that all animals and people were born through a certain process and it was very unlikely there would be an exception. In fact, it seemed like the purported divine birth of Jesus resembled fairy tales or claims that certain ancient Kings were divine. It seemed like what ancient people were apt to think and believe before they could really reason well about what was going on around them. So I was very relieved when I ran into Gnostics' version of Jesus's birth and their claims that Jesus did not think he was divine or born differently than any other man of his time. They also claimed that these documents had been suppressed which were different from the version that the emerging predominating church put out.
The ability to reason seemed to have developed slowly. But it was going to help discern more accurate truths about the nature of reality. I thought that people who believed the Mormon Prophet's claims about deciphering hieroglyphics on gold plates he was led to through the help of an angel were somewhat naive. If the Prophet seemed very prayerful at the same time and spoke in a profoundly 'religious' manner this was apt to cause people to believe his claims all the more, I thought. He would not have seemed like the ordinary prevaricator.
It was a very big problem to me to live among people who got very angry if you disputed such claims and said they couldn't possibly be true! I would be coerced on Sunday to get up and say that I believed the Church of Latter Day Saints was the only true church and the teachings of the prophet were true! I felt angry because I was being coerced to say something I did not believe. My mother would not allow me to stay away from church either. She would get very angry if I did not go. In fact I resolved to have a talk with my mother to tell her I could not be baptized as a member when I was eight years old as I had too many doubts. She forestalled this action by asking her brother from Salt Lake to do the baptizing. I was very fond of him and didn't want to upset him, too, as well as quarrel with my mother who did not brook disagreement well, but I knew very well this baptism was not going to take and I would soon be back to doubting again, probably the very next day.
As soon as I was an adult and had more freedom to think and say what I thought I knew I would be leaving the church. So having gone through all this soul searching and examining claims that sounded false in some way to me in the Mormon Church, I also examined all the claims I doubted made in Christian Churches I investigated.
I am still today reading books such as this one called "Hidden History" about any history that might have been suppressed about the life of Jesus. I have always found him to be a very great thinker and teacher, and I was very intrigued to find out that these claims bothered the "Gnostics" who down through history expressed their opposition with documents they claimed were more authentic at the risk of being arrested for heresy.
My goal was to get at the truth as near as possible. I realized that if there were documents that even claimed that Christ did not believe he was divine when the Catholic Church proclaimed his divinity there would be a problem. I would say that the claim of divinity was favored because it made Jesus sound powerful and unique. It therefore established a church that proclaimed it as the true representative of a divine leader, of the son of God himself. I would say that whenever a church makes a claim that belies common experience it is to set it apart and make it seem more authoritative. Yes, Jesus is the one exception, the only true son of God. And how was this fact ascertained, through prayer, since it was claimed after his death by people who had not known him. Prayer is subjective. Paul received a vision. Others came to this 'knowledge' through visions. But that kind of proof is still on shaky ground which is why I think many people with this belief get angry if it is questioned and this is of course the road to suppression and coercion which led to the Inquisition with its most extreme punishments. Okay, you don't want to believe this? You are the enemy of the church and its revelations of divinity and the church will be justified in persecuting you for the sin of heresy!
Wars are very often fought over people not believing and objecting to a leader's claims. Hitler was ready to mow down everyone in his path who objected to his cleansing the land of heretics like the Jews in the interest of purifying the Aryan brotherhood. He was a self proclaimed prophet who was going to set up a new world order after he had conquered the major countries.
But the Inquisition more than matched Nazism in its range of persecution and atrocities toward people who did not embrace the beliefs of the church. This church was once more powerful than any government in the world.
Now this historian, Tim Wallace-Murphy, who writes of all these matters in this book of history, is a pretty brave man as I see it, but men have had to be brave to oppose the reigning leaders of thought if they disagreed with them. I have been seeking such writers all my life because I believe the fearless examination of reality by such thinkers is our only hope of advancing civilization. We have to allow disagreement and questioning without trying to punish those who do it so severely. Such thinkers have been called blasphemers down through the ages, when I have thought they were really more truth seekers, who did not want to be deceived.
Such men have preserved ancient documents that differed with accepted versions. They have tried to keep alive the spirit of questioning even when leaders in power found them disturbing. From them have come great works, great inventions, the advancement of physics, and much much more. Jesus is not the only great thinker and teacher born in this world. There have been many more whose work requires recognition in order to benefit from their insights. The idea there is only one great thinker authorized because he is the son of God does not give credibility to many more thinkers down through history, this including women, too, who have contributed to our knowledge of reality. And the best ways to develop the mind and spirit of man.