We are All Dumpster Divers

I had a remarkable night last night. For that matter, remarkable things happen to me all the time, but I don’t write about all of them.

I had a bad dream. I dreamed I was with people from my high school, at some sort of reunion.

I am not one of those individuals who wants to hang around with high school classmates. I had a good time in high school, since it was a place where I could goof off and escape my family, but my classmates were hard, worldly people. I don’t want to rekindle anything. I don’t think they have anything of value to give me. I don’t feel like justifying the strange choices I’ve made. They couldn’t possibly understand.

An aggressive girl who was less attractive than she believed was sitting next to me in a jazz bar. I don’t go to bars. This girl was a composite of people I knew. I would compare her to an Ally Sheedy character in a movie. A B-student, at best. Not cheerleader material, but not singled out for being homely. Shrill. Talkative. A shrew in the making.

She was criticizing my life, telling me I wasn’t “much at fulfillment.” She was trying to convince me I had accomplished nothing. I asked her who she thought she was, telling me how to live. I asked her why she thought I owed her anything. More than the rudeness, I was taken aback by the sense of entitlement. I didn’t see why I should be harangued by a woman I hadn’t seen since the Reagan years.

The impression I got was that she felt I was obligated to contort my life to suit her idea of what a potential husband should be like. That’s a little like practicing your ballet so you can dance into the path of a train. Who would want a hellcat like her? She was the kind of woman who drive men to mistresses.

Some other classmates were there, and we were talking about one who was missing. His name was Mark. He jumped off a bridge in 1993. I just looked up the year, but I could not find details.

The rumor is that he could not cope with the realization that he was a homosexual. I don’t know if that was what destroyed his hope, but I do know he was a miserable person.

After my sophomore year, my dad did something totally out of character and shelled out about $2000 to send me to Europe. A teacher I liked was going to be a chaperone. Miss Beame. She was about six years older and us. Attractive, to say the least. But I’m getting off the point.

She put posters up, and I started telling friends how great Europe was, and pretty soon, three of us were signed up.

Mark was one of my two best friends at that point. Not because I liked him. He liked me.

I was prone to associating with people based on the fact that they were willing to talk to me. You know how high school is. You look at the tables in the lunchroom and decide where you are entitled to sit, and that’s where you go.

He was one of the school’s “smart kids,” but I was a lot smarter. I believe that bothered him. He was very pushy. He was very critical. He treated people as though he were in charge.

I was very passive, so I didn’t think in terms of trying to dominate people, and I wasn’t very sensitive to the fact that imperious people mistreated me. It seemed normal to me. It was what I was subjected to at home.

While we were in Europe, I suddenly realized how obnoxious he was, and I cut him off. After that, he was out of my circle.

By the time he died, he was an acquaintance. In fact, that’s pretty much what he was by the end of the Europe trip. He moved to the second layer of “friends,” and then he was out. I didn’t mourn for him. It was like hearing about a stranger.

In the dream, people seemed to have a protective mindset about him. They were looking at a newspaper article about his suicide, and they said things that seemed to threaten anyone who criticized him.

No one was criticizing him, but they seemed determined to intimidate anyone who might consider it. They were protecting him because he was a homosexual.

As we were walking away from the bar, I lagged behind the others, and I said, “It’s been nice seeing you. I guess.”

After that I got away from them.

When I woke up, I felt as though the rude girl’s remarks had weight. For a few minutes, I saw myself through the eyes of hard, godless people, and I felt panicked.

In my dreams, I am not myself. Sometimes I don’t believe in God. Sometimes I do immoral things I wouldn’t even want to do in real life. I don’t understand it. I can understand having a sexual dream or a dream about hurting someone who makes me mad, but I can’t understand dreaming of something I would ordinarily have to interest in.

In real life, I would not have been with these people. I would not have been in a bar. I would have told that girl off very forcefully, or I would have gotten up and left without wasting the effort of speaking to her, and I would have left the bar instantly. But in the dream, their view of life seemed more rational, and that carried through in the three or four minutes after I awoke.

I started talking to God, and he started showing me things.

This world is controlled by hell. Human beings, including most Christians, prefer Satan to God. That’s why he is the god of this world. While we’re here, we waste our time pursuing utterly worthless things he says are important. Then we die content, thinking we’ve made a difference. In reality, we’ve done nothing of use.

Godless people think their lives have meaning if they affect society. For example, you might write a bestselling book. You might become famous and receive $20 million dollars per role, making movies. You might become president after being carried through law school and serving 143 days as an undistinguished junior senator.

People might think you’re important, and you are likely to believe it. They may hush themselves when you speak. They may pamper you and mail you fan letters. But when it’s over, you will leave the earth with nothing, and you are likely to burn in hell forever.

We can’t accumulate anything here. Nothing lasts. Even environmentalists, who think they’re saints for “preserving” the planet for future generations, are throwing their lives down the toilet. This planet is going to be destroyed. Even scientists say so. The sun will go out. If we move to another solar system, that sun will go out. Nothing here is eternal.

No one will remember the famous people of 2015 in 20015. Not the ones who didn’t serve God. No one will know what an Academy Award is. No one will know what America was or care that you were the president. All your money will be gone. Everything you created will be gone, unless it’s in a museum, in very bad shape.

What lasts, then? What is it that we are supposed to bring with us into eternity?

People. We can take people with us. Everything else stays here. Everything else is, essentially, excrement.

Jesus told us to lay up treasures in heaven, where nothing is destroyed. He was talking about people.

Does that mean all we should care about is getting people saved? No, because we do stupid, carnal things in order to get people to the altar. The things you do to get 10000 people saved today may cost the kingdom a million later on. God does not send us here to do things quickly and sloppily. He could never do that. He isn’t like that.

God wants us to help people become like him, right here. Right now. He wants us to listen to him, follow his orders, and do it his way. That means praying in tongues, destroying pride, and becoming Spirit-led.

Many preachers think they’ve pleased God because they have big churches. God is going to tell them there is no permanent reward for that. They build these monstrosities to glorify themselves, so they get their reward here on earth. The people who are rewarded will be those who reach others God’s way.

When you’re in heaven and the game is over, you’ll be with the people you reached here on earth, forever. They will be your treasures.

The world is a dirty diaper, floating in a sea of hot excrement. We huddle toward the center, avoiding the the hot spray from the waves of sewage. We waste our lives building towers of excrement. None of it survives, and many of us are destroyed along with our works.

We don’t realize how ugly and filthy the world is, because we’re used to it. We’re in denial, and denial has become our protection. Without it, we would be in despair.

Are people really happy doing things their way? While I was talking to God last night, I thought about the people I’ve known. I thought about people who were considered successful.

My grandparents had a bad marriage. Three of their daughters divorced. The other is becoming demented. Her daughter’s young husband died in a fiery plane crash. One of my dad’s business associates lost a son to a murdering rapist. The man’s ex-wife lost her mind and committed suicide. His second wife died suddenly. His daughter committed suicide.

Another of my dad’s associates will die a disbarred felon. Another is such a nasty person no one would even talk to him if he didn’t have money. My mother died from cancer, unappreciated and mistreated.

I could sit here all day without coming up with anyone who could say, “My life worked.”

Godless people aren’t much at fulfillment.

If you concern yourself with saving human beings and helping God rebuild them, you will have a different outcome. You won’t leave a mountain of crap behind for the rain to wash away. When you die, you’ll be headed to rejoin people you love, and you’ll know you helped put them in the safe place where you’ll be together for eternity.

You will know that you showed people what true love and true purpose are. No one who is not Spirit-led can do that. They’re all chasing shadows.

The world is horrible. It’s a death camp where we are processed, harvested, and slaughtered. And it’s going to get worse. We love Satan. We really do. That’s not a joke. He is going to win.

When God comes back to restore order, it will be to a world where Satan had his way. Satan will have to be forced to leave, because humanity will want him to stay.

If you don’t have the Holy Spirit, you’ll think everything is fine, or that getting rid of Christianity and the Jews will fix everything. You’ll be blind, deaf, and stupid. You won’t resent playing with excrement. You’ll love it.

The world seems beautiful, even in its cursed state, but it’s a ball of manure. It is ruined. It is full of poison. There is no hope for it.

I guess this will sound disrespectful, but I don’t want any more Marks in my life. He was a Jewish atheist. He said that when you die, “You rot.” He had no help, but he had pride, and he made other people unhappy. He was one of those people who took the joy out of other people’s lives.

I want to be a humble person who introduces people to joy. I don’t want to spend the rest of my days trying to prove I’m right about everything, and that my way works. If people associate with me, I want it to be because they love me, not because they can get something from me or because I abuse and brainwash them into thinking the mistreatment I deal out to them is friendship.

Sooner or later, every proud, hard-hearted person jumps off a bridge. That’s a hard word, but it’s undeniable. If you’re blessed, your fall comes during this life, while you have time to change. If not, you will plunge from God’s presence in heaven.

I keep asking God to remove the proud people from my life, and he’s doing it. Sometimes when he takes someone away, it’s an obvious choice, but some of his picks surprise me. They are people I thought of highly.

The one proud person I did not expect him to remove from my life is me. I wanted my pride taken away, but when I prayed for proud people to be removed, I didn’t realize I was praying about myself.

I’ll take it. No complaints here. It’s a bonus.

The prosperity gospel is excrement. It is pus. It will never work. It never has. The unconditional approval gospel is just as bad. Love is not approval. God takes us as we are, but if we don’t change, he stops blessing us, and we displease him.

Humility is everything. A love of correction is everything. These, coupled with a strong prayer life guided by the Holy Spirit, will fix you. Then you’ll want what God wants, and he will start helping you. You will bear fruit, and it will be with you in heaven.

To the people I’ve offended, I have nothing to say except, “Grow up.” Making you happy and feeding your self-centered fantasies are not on God’s list of things he created me to do. Get over it. And if you can’t, you will be replaced. That’s the way the kingdom works.

This will be helpful, if you take it to heart. I hope some of the ground it lands on is fertile.