Season 1 Podcast 33, “Managing One’s Spiritual Environment.”
Welcome to Season 1 “A New Voice of Freedom,” written by Ronald Keith Messer. This Podcast is taken from a series of Books written under the banner of “In Defense of Christianity.” Podcast 33 is entitled “Managing One’s Spiritual Environment.”
Socrates said, “I honor and love you: but why do you who are citizens of the great and mighty nation care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little amount wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?”
As Christians, we know that the soul of man consists of both the spirit body and the physical body, the spiritual and the temporal, and with Socrates, we seek “the greatest improvement of the soul.”
To do that we must create an environment where people are free to become what they wish to become.
The purpose of this podcast is to encourage all Christians to take back the culture they have lost to political correctness and to build an environment where freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the freedom to believe, to teach, to preach, and to practice one’s religion and to live one’s personal values is protected.
Let’s examine the word ‘environment.’ It consists of two parts: ‘e-n-v-i-r-o-n’ and ‘m-e-n-t.’ ‘M-e-n-t’ is a suffix that turns verbs to nouns. It means an action or state of being. ‘E-n-v-i-r-o-n’ means to surround, to encircle, to enclose, or to encompass. ‘Environment,’ then, means a state of being enclosed, surrounded, embraced, or even imprisoned.
Christ said, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” The world is cunning. Even spiders surround their victims in silk before they devour them.
Some environments cast out or even kill those who do not conform. Early Athens was supposedly a democratic republic, yet Socrates, at age 70, was executed in Athens for teaching critical thinking to the youth. The charges were impiety and corruption of the youth because he taught the youth to question traditions. Athens, which claimed to be a democracy, executed its intellectual conscience for exercising his democratic rights. America today, with its growing anti-Christian bias, is not much different than the Athens of Socrates’ day. As with Athens, the democratic socialists are using democracy to forcefully silence freedom of speech under the authority of political correctness. Those who seek a new world order, under the pretense of democracy, are forcing everyone to obey the conditions established by the new age. We are no longer a democratic republic. We are swiftly moving toward socialism.
We must be allowed to create environments and to pursue our own desires unless those desires infringe unjustly on the rights of others; however, we must not be allowed to force others to become part of our environment. I am afraid that is what is happening in America today.
It is common to create environments that are in harmony with the desires of the majority.
However, that is systematically being denied to Christians. I have observed that ambitious politicians package environments, much like the package of a cruise ship, and sell it to their constituents for the price of liberty.
In the package designing politicians promise security, entitlements, privileges, rights, free electricity, free phones, free gas, free housing, free college, free food, and free healthcare in return, of course, for remaining in office. The new world liberals have mastered the art of packaging environments for sale to special interest groups at the taxpayer’s expense, and at the expense of the freedom of our nation.
Think of an environment not just as a place, but also as a state of being or state of mind or collocation of desi
