Emerging Tech Ethics ・・・ New Media Rhetorics
My Multi-Touch ebook with poetry, photography, music, and voice, publicly available in the Apple Bookstore, is no longer available for sale. Instead, moving forward, I am offering syntaxicon as a free PDF version comprised of original text and image. Please access syntaxicon here for download today, and enjoy. Thank you.
Wanted to turn part of my Florida Room into a studio after stumbling on art I created in 1990, my Reactor piece, while managing the Radiation Department office at Three Mile Island. Having fun merging my photographer’s eye and passion for fractals into the world of abstract expressionist acrylic painting since July. Artist Wayne Chambers threw some art materials my way, and, Voila! Below are some cropped canvas sample selections, in rough chronological order of their creation, beginning with my first painting: Potter’s Field. NOTE: This post updates with new art creations added.
Sometimes, your greatest inspiration will come through encouragement from people who believe in you; but, you cannot rely on that for your artistic growth, because when their deafening silence comes, and it will, at the end of the day, you must commit your talent and its direction to God and yourself, not to the varied, contrary opinions of others less invested than you. Nonetheless, it’s all still going strong here. Remember to rest, reflect, revise, repeat, and then rest.
As far as any argument or contention that oils are superior to acrylics because that’s what the Masters used, reality is, oils are all that the master painters had available in their day and age. If acrylics were available to them, many would have chosen them. Because of the many similarities between oils and acrylics, great painters in acrylics are likely to be great painters in oils, also.
Despite the paintings’ apparent lack of cohesion to the uneducated eye, these artists cultivated the interplay of skill and unplanned occurrences to determine the painting’s final outcome.
Comment on Abstract Expressionists at thoughtco.com
‘Sold’ a modified print of Potter’s Field on Day One. Here it is, owner-framed.
So, happy with this new direction. Stay tuned for more…
Oh, and here’s a digital copy of Reactor. Original work is believed to be lost.
Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Ephesians 6:11-12 (KJV)
One of the most declarative sections of scripture lays out the battle or struggle the Christian faces in this life. It is a battle against “spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” I like the King James Version of these verses for semantic reasons: armor, wrestle, etc. Let’s unpack some of this command.
The Whole Armor of God
Paul is going to describe this armor a few verses down, but the only thing that I wish to say about the armor is that it is not physical. With that said, we can then understand what Paul tells us about our struggle in that armor: we wrestle. Wrestling in physical armor is impractical and will lead to loss. Think about a wrestling match: two opponents dressed in barely more than their skivvies. Wrestling is one-on-one combat. That’s important. Paul mentions two prospective opponents for our one-on-one wrestling.
Our Opponents
Clearly, at the very start of our struggle, we must recognize that “we do not wrestle with flesh and blood,” so let’s get that out of the way. The only things we knowingly have in our world that consist of flesh and blood are the animal kingdom, perhaps insects, if we may lean in that direction, and humans. But because Paul concludes these verses with “the heavenly,” we are not fighting earthly human creatures in our present day and age. That means human beings are not our enemy, to Paul here. More specifically, humans are not to be our target. We cannot wrestle with humans, physically, in any way that would warrant our need to “put on the whole armor of God.” People are not the enemy of the Christian. Our neighbor, the mailman, our spouse, it doesn’t matter who is the human, we are not to physically wrestle with this person in this life as if God wills it. We are not in direct physical combat with any persons who may oppose us, like it or not, at war or not, locked up or not, not as ‘servants of God.’
We are in combat with unseen forces, Paul says early on here, with “the wiles of the devil,” and our status in such circumstance is “to stand.” Standing is not an offensive position, but is defensive. Since Paul immediately moves from standing against the devil to not wrestling with humans, we can see a direct comparison that includes a do and a do not and another do: Do stand, don’t wrestle humans, do wrestle “principalities”…”powers”…rulers of the darkness of this age”…”spiritual hosts of wickedness.”
Combative Christians
We may put on “the armor of God” only because we are in God’s service, the service of the King, and may therefore help fight for his cause. Again, Paul is clear here: God’s cause is against the devil and his minions, not other humans, even when they appear to be downright devilish. This does not mean we are not to do the right thing when confronting evil and fight it as necessary. We are built with conscience.
And Paul’s edict is not offensive, but defensive. If we think we are at war with humanity as the enemy of God, and that we are not only free, but instructed, to attack other people as such, we are not in the will of God. Our armor is broken, overall ineffectual, in self-defeat. We can go through the motions of putting it on, even getting corporate approval from others going through the motions, and we can target individuals we believe are enemies to us and our religious agenda, but that combativeness is not by God’s request. We may even hear voices telling us to be aggressive toward others, on whatever grounds we may come up with; again, even corporately, that does not comport with Paul’s instructions.
We are not at war with people. The sport of wrestling, again, is one-on-one. If we are wrestling with “flesh and blood,” then that is our struggle opponent. The reason Paul posits that dynamic against what we are to wrestle is because he knows we can only do one or the other at one time. Wrestling against human opponents means we must neglect the real wrestling we are called to against spiritual wickedness in high places. That spiritual wickedness may therefore feed off of our neglect, perhaps even be raised to greater heights since we are off-track and out of the will of God by wrestling with flesh and blood. It is one or the other, and Paul would have it that a far less destructive force of humans benefit, rather than wicked principalities and powers of the age further prospering by wiles of the devil.
Combat Christianity
Christians consider their enemies to be the world, the flesh, and the devil. And scripture is replete with instructions for addressing these three forces. The world is the world system that builds around us without the direct input and recognition of God. A humanism that denies God exists or has a valid say in the conversation for the birth and progress of humanity. We may fight it by calling it out as such and seeking to fill any gaps with scripture that may apply. Many great scholars and theologians have fought back against the world system as so. But it is not a fight against other humans. The devil is behind it.
The flesh to any Christian is the lust and idolatry inherent to the human condition. Even if other people are involved intimately in a temptation, those people are not the enemy of the Christian any more than the Christian is the enemy of those participants. The Book of Romans is clear about this dynamic. When it comes to the enmity of the flesh for the Christian, others are not to blame, but the Christian is guilty. While the devil may be behind it, the devil does not get the actual blame for sins of the flesh. We do.
The devil as the enemy of the Christian needs no introduction or exegesis. Scripture clearly identifies and elaborates extensively on the Satan creature falling to Earth for pride and thereby becoming the enemy of mankind through devious interactions in the Garden, as Adam and Eve yielded their devotion.
Conclusion
Wrestling against the wrong force will cripple the force it was not intended to wrestle with, while empowering the force it does not take on properly. Do we see wicked principalities in power today? Have we helped propel them there? Have we made the people Christ died for our personal enemies? Some of the answers lie in who we really are. Are we CINOs? Are we regenerated? Are we self-deluded?
I can’t answer those questions for anyone else. But I can look around and see what it appears is happening in our world in our time. Evil seems to be unbridled and installed at the top. It didn’t get there on its own, but was elected and maintained by people who consider other people to be their enemies. That is neither the gospel of Christ nor the heart of God. Any so-called Christian concerned with anything but fulfilling the gospel of Christ or understanding and sharing the heart of God is out of the will of God. It’s no deeper than that. Can we be out of the will of God on a grand scale and still be Christians. Sure. But, likely, not for long.
While humanity is in a dispensation of grace, and God says all is forgiven, just come to Me, judgment of this world is not where we are at in history; but, according to Peter, the stage we are at is the judgment of believers (1 Peter 4:17). Well-meaning Christians who think they are fighting against other humans, when they do damage to those persons God died for, in or outside the Church, are to be judged here and now. See some of their downfalls in our news. Peter also says to be of a sober mind, considering…
Rejoined Linkedin after a 10-year hiatus. Was going great til it insisted I upload a government ID for access. Have seen where others did and still were denied access. Hard pass. It’s over.
I am contracted with Cognella for 2026 publication of my Understanding Information Literacy: Strategies in Processing Everyday Information textbook, and 2027 publication of my Digital Media Profiteers: Provocateurs, Jesters, and Propagandists textbook.
I spend a fair amount of time with my B ∙ R ∙ A I ∙ N news portal, some of which is mirrored at Bluesky nowadays! Please visit and bookmark. Merci.
In the 42 years of my life as a Christian, I have never heard a message preached from the pulpit on the dangers of the hypocritical lifestyle.
Yet pastors over the past few decades have very comfortably thrown stones at LGBTQ people as someone to love while the sin of the ‘lifestyle’ must be condemned. This is constant, and recurring, even heard this week from Joyce Meyer, who looked visibly baffled, as she put it, by the whole ‘gay’ thing.
After hearing her lecture, it’s understandable why her church members may not want to come to her for counsel on the topic. They likely just sit back and suck it up; after all, she claims to have ‘the anointing’ and no sensible Christian would want to take that on. Yet, in reality, all who believe have the anointing as far as teaching and learning go: “But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him…” 1 John 2:27.
Some of this negligence may be understandable, as Meyer no doubt has her hands full with sinners of divorce among her followers. They’re likely holding onto Jesus’ comments in Mark 10 looking for partner infidelity as a way out, and likely being taught that is a valid reason, but that’s not what Jesus says. His contention is that if one divorces other than for fornication or sexual impropriety, it causes the individual to be available for porneia, or sexual impropriety, when partner sexual impropriety has already occurred. It’s not permission. He brings in Moses to verify that divorce was permitted because of their hardened hearts. But God never changed: “For I hate divorce…” Malachi 2:16a. Of course forgiveness is available, as with any sin, but rushing into another marriage is rather presumptuous.
So what’s going on with her bafflement on the ‘gay’ thing?
People have been the same across the centuries, there is nothing new about human nature under the sun. What did Jesus say about the ‘gay lifestyle’ while he was here?
* crickets *
Apart from Jesus telling people caught up in sexual intercourse outside of a marriage bond to stop doing so, the closest we can get to Jesus addressing ‘homosexuality’ is the emasculating tribal ritual of Sodom that its leaders put upon visitors to the Godforsaken place. Oddly enough, Jesus claims that Sodom would be justified compared to those who reject the kingdom of God and will suffer greater judgment (Luke 10:12). This is astonishing. Never preached.
So one argument may be that gay people were not an issue in the time of Jesus, culturally. Which is absurd. Jesus had 12 men he called to follow him and the idea that they were all straight in their sexual orientation is kinda pie in the sky. John, for one, highly questionable. Yet that seems to be the preferred status for people in rapt denial.
Back to lifestyle. Jesus had a lot to say about one lifestyle that he witnessed that was so disgusting to him that he condemned it, page after page. It was a ‘hypocritical’ lifestyle adopted by religious leaders of the day. A wide assortment of scriptures testify to Jesus publicly calling out this abomination and his frustration with its adherents.
Okay, so, whatever happened to the ‘hypocritical lifestyle’ since Jesus was here and condemned it? Did it disappear when he did? No, it continued to flourish and grow, and we can witness it today in virtually every pulpit.
While it’s no mystery why pastors like Joyce Meyer don’t dedicate their time and energy to condemning the hypocritical lifestyle when it’s so much easier to get audience support on condemning LGBTQ, who is more likely to be committing this sin that Jesus railed about continually, and who are these hypocrites who contributed intimately to his [requisite] death, overall, his place on the cross? Religious leaders caught up in their hypocritical lifestyle.
Christianity Today published their fascinating article on pastors and porn a while back. Less than 1% of pastors would let their congregation know they are caught up in porn. That’s more than 99% of today’s ‘Christian’ spiritual leaders surveyed in the study living a hypocritical lifestyle. Yet they have the gaul to condemn others for their lifestyle, when they are consumed and debased by their own lusts, but in secret. And don’t think for a moment that these pastors caught up in porn aren’t ever looking at gay porn. Fat chance. Their clueless spouses all walking around, proud, pushing the kids in their strollers with their ice cream cones while at Doodlebug Park.
The Apostle Paul wasn’t silent on the matter. While Romans 1 condemns the reprobate lifestyle of the idolator, Romans 2 condemns the envious reprobate hypocrite pointing the finger at the idolator in Romans 1. Paul wraps up this duality of the human condition in Romans 3, where all have sinned and are found guilty before God, in need of his provided redemption through Jesus Christ.
But we can go back to Jesus again and the Prodigal in Luke 15, who lived a debauched lifestyle before coming to his senses. The story doesn’t end with him coming home and God falling onto his neck in unconditional love. The older brother, the hypocrite who did not do what his younger brother did, yet called him out in critical judgement, actually did what his younger brother had done: not in overt behavior, but in his jealous heart. And he didn’t own up to the hypocrisy in his lifestyle. Just like today’s pastors in the pulpit won’t confront their hypocritical lifestyles.
The next time a religious figure condemns gay people for their ‘lifestyle’ just look at them and ask yourself, do they have a hypocritical lifestyle problem? Chances are, you know the answer. But, whatever you do, don’t hate them.
Hate their sin.
I’m not entirely sure as to why I feel the need to post this publicly, though feel it may be cathartic somewhat privately. Regardless, I am posting in public for the fun of it. It’s a partial list of famous people that I have met over the years, in various situations, whether serving, talking, working, or just partying with them. It’s been a magical ride. FWIW, some great nightclubs that I’ve been to include Studio 54, Studio One, Circus Disco, clubs in Munich and Jerusalem, among others. I was a non-union actor and character model for a number of years. Good times!
John Adams. Composer.
Keith Barish. Producer.
John Berendt. Author.
Beau Bridges. Actor.
Tony Danza. Actor.
Richard Deacon. Actor.
Bucky Dent. Baseball Player, NY Yankees.
Divine. Actress.
Eileen Ford. Founder, Ford Models.
Rudolf “Rudi” Gernreich, Fashion Designer.
Nancy Honeytree. Musician.
Ron Huldai. Mayor, Tel Aviv.
Garrison Keillor. Author.
Valerie Landsburg. Actress.
Edith Massey. Actress.
Willie Nelson. Singer.
Twila Paris. Singer.
Lester Persky. Producer.
Suzanne Pleshette. Actress.
Robert Rauschenberg. Artist.
Craig Russell. Performer.
Mimi Sheraton. Food Critic, NY Times.
Edwin Starr. Singer.
Stephen Stucker. Actor.
Rip Torn. Actor.
Abe Vigoda. Actor.
Andy Warhol. Artist.
John Waters. Filmmaker.
LeRoy Zimmerman. Attorney General, Pennsylvania.
Do not let the sun go down on your anger.
– Ephesians 4:28b
On February 26, 2023, I attended church.
The only one masked, the service was at a neighborhood Baptist church I had attended several years ago. A relatively humble structure, I was looking forward to basking that Sunday morning in the warm glow of the high yellow glass windows that lined the sanctuary. They were gone.
How close is the anger-hate connection? When Jesus overturned the moneychanger tables in the temple he was full of righteous indignation; a holy anger, if you will, anger at the sacrilege he hated to see take place there. Righteous anger and hatred of evil. They go together. When do they separate or go their own ways, or would that be never? What about the evil in anger?
Not being from the South, here I raise my voice, and gentile Georgians think it’s anger; but it’s not, it’s drama. Personally, I’m not prone to anger, but thinking back to when I last might have been angry, even mildly. It was about a month ago, waiting in a Greek restaurant. But I wasn’t angry, I was irate. I told the clerk that I no longer wanted the order, that I wanted my money back, and that I was irate. She did her best to placate things, and I thanked her calmly and left.
When I was a young man, I worked one brief season at Robinsons in Beverly Hills. I remember trying to calm down a hysterical woman returning something at the register. My manager came up to me and said, She’s irate, I’ll handle it. He then worked his guest service magic while I was left to ponder the higher level of interaction that was underway due to that single word: irate.
Of course, irate isn’t just angry, it’s very angry. As so, it calls for special measures. Ironically, irate people are upset that they have been driven to the point of ire. In other words, they may not have been angry in any sense when they walked in the door; quite conversely, I was very pleasant when I was in the restaurant. My favorite food, Mediterranean, a rather intellectual chat with a man who was likely a returned soldier as he knew Serbia well enough to comment on its cuisine, and an elderly man who chatted with me about why I had an SLR camera around my neck, he and his wife were curious. I was far from irate or even mildly angry. What happened?
There was no one ahead of me when I ordered. I was feeling good enough to tip the cashier over $3 for an order under $20. All she had to do was ring me up. Then the madness started.
A cougher came in. I was masked and rather sedentary. He was masked and all over the place. Coughing on everything and around everyone. Not a gentle cough, but a deep, throaty, I’m-carrying-something-and-it-won’t-let-go kind of cough. Incessant. He was sick. I tried standing off to one side, he took that as a challenge and weaseled his way around to me eventually. Meanwhile, no food. He ordered boxes of pastries, was tended to hand and foot, coughing and ordering, and being bagged and rung up. While I waited. And waited. Well over twenty minutes? Ordered when there was no one there. No word on it. Nothing. Invisible. That is, until irate.
I told the cashier I changed my mind. She had to call her boss to walk her through how to return a purchase. The cougher roamed and did his thing. But suddenly pleasing me became the main activity, if for no other reason than to get me out. I didn’t create a scene. Just emphatically told the cashier that I was irate, in need of instant resolution. After some spinning wheels and phone commands, it came. I left, vowed to never return, it was that awful an experience. And I won’t.
And yes, there was hate. I didn’t hate the cashier or the cooks who bungled the order. I wish I could say that I only hated the dread experience. But that would be lying. I hated the cougher. I hated the power he had over the situation that turned my pleasant afternoon into a nightmare. I hated the insolence he had to move about freely, masked, as if the world would just have to endure. I hated his sneakiness, his way of ensuring he connected with everyone despising him. Because he knew what he was doing. He was stirring a pot. Pushing all the buttons. However one might phrase it, he was being evil. Deliberately. Possessively. I hated him. His very being.
Was I hating evil? Not that it ever came to mind. It isn’t even until now as I write these passages that I have given thought to hating someone. I’m a lover, not a hater. Yet, there I was, hating the loss of a tasty meal I had my hopes on, all the wasted time I had spent there waiting to no avail, and that I had been driven to ire. It was wrong for me to hate someone because they provoked me to anger. God wants to show me that they are not the problem, I am, despite their behavior. He died for that cougher. I’m to strive to love him in spite of his rebellious nature.
I don’t take lightly to anger creeping into my life. It comes, as it must to us all. But, being of Irish and Italian descent, I have had to work in my life to ensure anger takes its rightful place, that being not over me. It has worked, with the grace of God. It seems, once you recognize it, and the Word of God that says to keep it at bay, obedience leads to habit, which leads to lifestyle. Nonetheless, there is the root of it. I hated him for making me irate, causing me to hate myself for letting anger creep in the way it did and causing me to adjust my behavior. Yet, staying calm and composed to protect myself. I was able to walk away from my anger moment. What about perpetual anger?
The pastor is a young man, quite a pleasure to be around, bright and erudite. He wants to do the right thing. He plays the drums for the worship team, then gives a sermon. His style is conversational, open, friendly, but firm. The congregation lets out a subdued, occasional amen or two here or there over the course of at least an hour. There are less than 40 people spread throughout. He gets an amen out of me when he makes a reference to contemporary idolatries. But there’s one pivotal moment in his discourse that jumped out at me that afternoon.
Not leaning political, or bashing any specific group, somewhere in the middle of the sermon, the pastor makes a definitive reinforcing statement connected to the need to sustain, for winning a culture war. Then, and only then, a brief series of loud connected grunts and groans and amens. None before that moment, none thereafter. I wondered what had happened at that moment. And then I realized.
The message fed the church’s anger. Finally. It was the Fox News moment they were all paying for. It was why they were in church, in this particular church. They didn’t need it all the time. They just needed that one swift Sunday kick at The Other to reassure themselves that their anger is justified. Hey, it’s fed by the pastor. And all Hell break loose if these warriors weren’t going to go back to their televisions thankful for the angry opportunity to worship a God of culture wars on Sunday. Despite the fact that Jesus embraced his God-given culture, and expects us to do the same.