What Shall Save Us?

What shall save us?

Shall prayer alone save us, note that faith without works is dead. Prayer should be followed by standing in solidarity with victims of social ills and evils.

By Eric Leroy Wilson

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-leroy-wilson/standing-in-solidarity-wi_3_b_9081052.html

I think this is why Jesus invites us to stand in solidarity with the hurting. This is what He did. He lived with humanity. He was baptized in the water humanity was immersed in. Jesus lived and loved among the broken and spiritually bankrupt. Jesus stood in solidarity with the hurting and still does. And He invites us all to that dark place. This is a fact we have to constantly affirm in ourselves and confirm with our peers.

If we forget that Jesus stood in solidarity with the hurting we find ourselves falling prey to the rhetoric of the day. This is a rhetoric that gives us the luxury to question the veracity of the hurt first and then decide whether we will help or not. To fall prey to the rhetoric of the day leads us to use our own understanding of the hurt as a gauge to determine if we will help or not. But Jesus stood in solidarity with the hurting first and calls us to do the same. Whether it is those facing discrimination, the immigrant, the marginalized, or the broken; we move to the dark place and stand with the hurting first. We become a listening presence first. We love them first. Which then opens the lid for us to understand, ask questions in love, and determine how true the hurt is. We do this secondary work not from our vantage point but from theirs.

This call to those dark alleys of solidarity with the hurting pulls us in. When we get there we may not understand it but we will stand witness to so much power. And for those willing to go they gain more than just the enormous satisfaction of doing well. Those who stand in solidarity with the hurting also discover the deepest parts of who they are as well as gain a glimpse of God. All of which are worth a fortune.

Prayer is good starting point to engage with manmade sufferings but not an escape from exercising actions that promote the building goodness in society. We must also let our voices be heard without fear of ostracizations.

Standing Up and Standing out - The Fear of Ostracism is worse than Death

The fear of being disliked, not accepted, rejected, shunned, ostracized or expelled from your social connectivity or relationships with others, is a strong motivator to not do certain things.

We don't steal other's lives, sexual selection, personal safety, or property in order to maximize of cooperative survival advantage.

We do this mostly because they help us survive, and because they can also harm us back. What others will do to us matter's in our appraisal of the consequences to our actions. Others that don't help us survive, or can't respond by harming us, we generally don't care how we treat them (like most nonhuman animals).

Ostracism, to keep people from doing harm to others, can work. It's an effective way to get people to stop doing something or to start doing something. But ostracism can also be used as a tool for upholding falsity and incorrectness.

Ostracism can be used to keep people in line with falsity, by pressuring others to not speak up about important issues of concern. Silence of the information to remain unconsciously unaware of issues, is how some people in a community prefer to do things so that their personal attachment or investment in a way of doing things will continue.

What currently is happening, is the current condition, and most people tacitly accept this as the de facto standardized norms of acceptability, the "solid" "ground" of "truth", "reality", "and existence". But they don't understand that they are conditioned to accept the current condition as it is. The attachment to the current condition ensures it persists and doesn't change.

Those who speak up against the current condition that has falsity and issues with it, are going against the flow.

This is to go against the mainstream current and flow, to create turbulence, interference with the flow and current of the present condition. This rocks the boat. This can get us wrecked socially, and in turn hurt your survival optimization, and that leads us closer to the possibility of death.

Ostracism is feared more than death at a subconscious level, because if ostracism happens, death follows shortly after in our evolutionary history. This programmed survival intuition is ingrained within us.

Keep your head down, don't get involved in issues, otherwise people might not like you, then they won't support you, then you're social standing goes down, then you're a pariah, etc.

https://steemit.com/psychology/@krnel/standing-up-and-standing-out-the-fear-of-ostracism-is-worse-than-death

Come and light a kindle for them on October 29 2017 at 483 Oakwood Avenue Toronto

Time 11:00 AM

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”

Abraham Lincoln