12These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; 13wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.

– Jude 1:12-13

You are the ship, navigating your existence in God’s waters, whether you recognize them as His waters or not; it is all the Alls. Jude was talking about false teachers of faith, but expanding on his warning, we must beware of all false living; the stormy choppy seas of the modern era.

Hidden reefs are everywhere.

For example, smoking is sexy, let’s face it. It’s great. I love smoking cigars and occasionally smoked cigarettes when I was younger. Recently, I noticed cigarettes are making a sneaky comeback into media. People are not afraid of being seen smoking like they were a few years ago, perhaps looking for the cool factor attached to their public image, again, because smoking is fucking cool, but the reality is altogether different. No need to detail what we all know, the smells, the brown teeth, the health risks, the dead zombie leathery Marlborough Man. Smoking is cool as fuck and as bad as it gets. It’s a ‘waterless cloud’ of smoke that kills.

The false teachers are not only the bad actors looking for the swindle, and they’re not only the religious posers whose agendas are not truly for God. In a sense, we are all false teachers in the theater of modernity. We constantly jibber jabber advice about all kinds of stuff, from God to politics, religion to golf swings, TV shows to books. It’s endless, and social media has only made it worse. Being a false teacher is a profession, because any yahoo can be an armchair expert on any subject, all you need is a social media account and a big mouth. We used to make fun of used car salesmen, now it’s the preferred norm.

When you mix too many colors together you get mud. “Trust No One” can easily become the reaction.

This era of oversharing armchair bullshit is nothing new. As long as humans have been able to communicate there’s been gossip and misinformation. Some people are willingly deceiving, still others don’t realize they’re passing on junk instead of valuable knowledge.

One solution is going old school, back to tested institutions, and the smart ones will know that.

We must, and will once the ‘era’ is over, default back to the institutions we created over thousands of years to ensure that proper knowledge, the stuff that has been endlessly scrutinized and tested, is the only information we trust. It may not seem so, but this includes the religious institutions as well.

The Jews have meticulously cared for their knowledge over thousands of years. Some would argue too strictly, leaving little room for updating as humanity and civilizations evolved, but to their unfathomable credit they’ve withstood fads and governments with their own agendas trying to ‘false teach’ them into something they never asked for.

Christianity being born as a Jewish sect grew into its own thing, naturally following the same rules for safeguarding against unwanted ‘false teachings’. It amazes me, truly, how much foresight they had and sheer will to make what has been very incremental adjustments from the original teachings. The Catholic Church is built on the Jewish method of strict tradition; as the world evolved, and continues to do so, they remained steadfast, it’s remarkable.

I want all people of earth to discover God. I firmly believe that Jesus was an extraordinary prophet, a true Son of God, like no other, with the obvious inclusion of Moses and Buddha. I know very little about Muslims, so I cannot comment, but eventually plan on learning more about it.

God is God, by whatever name you use. God made all. God is all. God is The All.

Sift through the bombardment of constantly flowing information to purify what enters your mind. Enjoy yourself as moderns humans can, but be aware at all times that hidden inside just about everything is some truth and some falsities. We cannot wholly rely on whether it’s reliable, we must make that decision for ourselves after careful scrutiny.

As I get older and more experienced as a Pastor and Philosopher, I’m coming back to traditions more and more, like a child who left home for the wide open spaces and the glitz of the big city (which I did), only to find out that small town life figured it out a long time ago. Don’t be afraid of going back home. Be a modern person with the foundations of proper knowledge and grounded faith. You can’t get it at the minimart. Get a proper education and genuine faith in God, and then party at the dive bar, have it all, why not, just know what’s up at all times.

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