Modern-Day Slavery

There is a new modern-day slavery going on and many of us know nothing about it. Decades ago we were sold as slaves, but today we are selling ourselves for money and status, things that we value so much because of how severely deprived we were in the past. We spent so much time in the bondage of slavery, everyday deprived of our dignity and pride, degraded and made inferior..so much to the point where today we are willing to do any and everything just to become the “boss” and to achieve the status quo, even sell our souls, which unbeknownst to us is of much greater value than any part of us that had ever been sold before and worth so much more than any amount of money a bidder could put up to own it. Just like during slavery times, women’s bodies are being sold (whether in physical or fantasy form).

We are mockeries, like the black women in history that were made to be like circus acts because of their unusual assets (thin wastes, wide hips, and protruding breasts and behinds), and we feel that we’ve “made it” once the cheap cost for our virtue has been paid and we’re not satisfied until the whole world sees our shame, making it easy for our oppressors, we yearn for the “exposure”, which further solidifies in their minds and ours that we are like savage animals, with no ability to reason or to see the reasons why this is all wrong. If we could only see, we would run in the opposite direction and never look back. We would rebel.
Think back in history, and visualize a group of black men and women, all naked. Standing like pieces of merchandise waiting to be bought for the price of a working animal. Women’s bodies exposed to show what they are good for. Think about these women and how their bodies were subjected to rape and beatings. They longed for the ability to have dominion over their own beings, but they were deprived of that right. Now that we have that right to make a choice, we willingly subject ourselves to the same treatment. The only difference is that our beatings are more mental and emotional as we lay down and conform to society and the media’s way of defining us. We have become everything they said we were over time. Our minds have been manipulated and now we believe that our value is in our sexuality.

Think back to a time when slaveowners forced some blacks to be in charge of others, and they were made to beat their inferiors when they didn’t meet the slaveowner’s expectations. They had to desensitize their emotions so that they couldn’t feel the excruciating pain of having to beat down another person who they would’ve otherwise protected had their very life not been threatened. Or forced to watch as other blacks were beaten, raped, and hung. Our feelings and emotions had to be cut off for our own survival’s sake and we are still desensitized to this day as we commit crime against each other willingly.
Violence is the norm in our culture because we endured through it for so long. Now, the violent portions of our souls are being sealed and solidified through  an array of validations from media puppets with black faces given high platforms in order to sell us a false sense of pride in “hood status”. But it’s time for us to gain our senses back and to reintroduce our compassions and emotions to a broken situation. Violence against one’s own is like self-mutilation, which is a practice of the Pagans. And it leads to yet another form of slavery, where we’re locked up in penitentiary cages.

 We are not our enemy, in fact we don’t even wrestle against flesh and blood, but against Satan and his well-disguised principalities. If we could open our eyes to reality, we’d see that we need to start caring again. To stop putting price tags on our souls, and start considering the wages of sin. It’s time for black men to start seeing the black woman as she truly is, not through the eyes of the slaveowners, but through the eyes of God himself. She is not an object to be bought, sold, and used, but she is a rare gem to be valued, protected, and cared for.

We are not inferior and we should value each other more than we value money and status. For those things themselves are the root of all evil and were the origin of our oppression. But it was the strength of our own people that brought us out of slavery. It was the clear mind and strong conviction of a few powerful black slaves that started a movement, that was a domino effect to other movements that would completely change our position in this world. But there is still one thing that needs to change, and that is our mentality. Satan is cunning. He knows that if he can manipulate and corrupt our minds, he can have control over every other part of us. His hand of control is everywhere: in the music we listen to, in the food we eat, in the shows and movies we watch, in social media, and even in the people we idolize and look up to. Time is out for compromising, following trends, making excuses, being double-minded, entertaining drama and negativity, indulging in lusts, and so many other things that if we would stop justifying, we’d clearly see the wrong in them. As long as these things have dominion over us, we are slaves to them. And the things of this world are controlled by Satan so in turn, so are we if we allow them to continue to taint our hearts and minds.

There is so much more to say about our history and its ties to the patterns of today, but the main thing to know is that at the end of the day its all a spiritual battle. God’s commands/laws are here to protect us, not to deprive us of our freedoms. In fact, the world’s interpretation of freedom is truly bondage in itself. Don’t believe it? Find an area in life where you have given in to sin and try changing it. It will not be easy. That’s why we need Christ to break the chains that bond us in sin. We need our minds to be transformed. This cannot happen if we keep allowing Satan ways into our minds. He’ll even use our own desires, fears, and insecurities as a means of manipulating us into destructive patterns not only to us, but to those around us, and even to the generations to come. So it’s important that we know the origins of our ways of being so that we can break bad cycles and continue to be progressive as a society.

Dear God,

I thank you for making me exactly the way I am: black, American, a woman, strong, and capable of making change in this world. I pray that we all come to a realization of two things: What needs to change and What we can do to change it. I pray that you would put a desire in us to look within ourselves and start within our own hearts and souls and work our way outward to positively effect the world around us. Open our eyes so that we can clearly see the patterns that we have allowed to go on for long enough, and give us the courage and the will to put an end to it. Transform our lives for the better and allow us to then spread awareness, break generational curses, and change our futures forever for the better. I pray that this blog was well received and understood by the person who read it and that it initiates the journey to a better understanding of the connection between our history and today’s time. Thank you God, for your wisdom and for the grace and mercy you have shown to us across generations. It is truly amazing what you have given us the strength to accomplish. All the glory and honor goes to you.

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5 Things About Slavery You Probably Didn’t Learn In Social Studies

Edward Baptist’s new book, “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery And The Making Of American Capitalism”, drew a lot of attention last month after the Economist said it was too hard on slave owners.

What you might not have taken away from the ensuing media storm is that “The Half Has Never Been Told” is quite a gripping read. Baptist weaves deftly between analysis of economic data and narrative prose to paint a picture of American slavery that is pretty different from what you may have learned in high school Social Studies class.

The whole thing is well worth reading in full. Baptist positions his book in opposition to textbooks that present slavery like a distant aberration of American history, cramming 250 years into a few chapters in a way “that cuts the beating heart out of the story.” To counter that image of history, Baptist devotes much of the book to depicting the lived experience of enslavement in a way that’s vivid and immediate.

But for those of you who are strapped for time, or who want a peek into the book before committing to the full 420 pages, here are five of his key arguments:

1) Slavery was a key driver of the formation of American wealth.

Baptist argues that our narrative of slavery generally goes something like this: it was a terrible thing, but it was an anomaly, a sort of feudal throwback within capitalism whose demise would inevitably come with the rise of wage labor. In fact, he argues, it was at the heart of the development of American capitalism.

Baptist crunches economic data to come up with a “back-of-the-envelope” estimate of how much slavery contributed to the American economy both directly and indirectly. “All told, more than $600 million, or almost half of the economic activity in the United States in 1836, derived directly or indirectly from cotton produced by the million-odd slaves — 6 percent of the total US population — who in that year toiled in labor camps on slavery’s frontier.”

By 1850, he writes, American slaves were worth $1.3 billion, one-fifth of the nation’s wealth.

2) In its heyday, slavery was more efficient than free labor, contrary to the arguments made by some northerners at the time.

Drawing on cotton production data and firsthand accounts of slaveowners and the formerly enslaved, Baptist finds that ever-increasing cotton picking quotas, enforced by brutal whippings, led slaves to reach picking speeds that stretched the limits of physical possibility. “A study of planter account books that record daily picking totals for individual enslaved people on labor camps across the South found a growth in daily picking totals of 2.1 percent per year,” Baptist writes. “The increase was even higher if one looks at the growth in the newer southwestern areas in 1860, where the efficiency of picking grew by 2.6 percent per year from 1811 to 1860, for a total productivity increase of 361 percent.”

Free wage laborers were comparatively much slower. “Many enslaved cotton pickers in the late 1850s had peaked at well over 200 pounds per day,” Baptist notes. “In the 1930s, after a half-century of massive scientific experimentation, all to make the cotton boll more pickable, the great-grandchildren of the enslaved often picked only 100 to 120 pounds per day.”

3) Slavery didn’t just enrich the South, but also drove the industrial boom in the North.

The steady stream of large quantities of cotton was the lifeblood of textile mills in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and generated wealth for the owners of those mills. By 1832, “Lowell consumed 100,000 days of enslaved people’s labor every year,” Baptist writes. “And as enslaved hands made pounds of cotton more efficiently than free ones, dropping the inflation-adjusted price of cotton delivered to the US and British textile mills by 60 percent between 1790 and 1860, the whipping-machine was freeing up millions of dollars for the Boston Associates.”

Slavery in the South was also instrumental in changing the demographic face of the North, as Europeans streamed in to work in the region’s factories. “Outside of the cotton ports, jobs were scarce for immigrants in the slave states during the 1840s, and they had no desire to compete with workers driven by the whipping-machine,” Baptist explains. “The immigrants’ choice to move to the North had significant demographic impact, raising the northern population from 7.1 million in 1830 to 10 million in 1840, and then to over 14 million by 1850. In the same period, the South grew much more slowly, from 5.7 million in 1830 to almost 9 million.”

4) Slavery wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down economically by the time the Civil War came around.

Here’s Baptist:

In the 1850s, southern production of cotton doubled from 2 million to 4 million bales, with no sign of either slowing down or quenching the industrial West’s thirst for raw materials. The world’s consumption of cotton grew from 1.5 billion to 2.5 billion pounds, and at the end of the decade the hands of US fields were still picking two-thirds of all of it, and almost all of that which went to Western Europe’s factories. By 1860, the eight wealthiest states in the United States, ranked by wealth per white person, were South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Connecticut, Alabama, Florida, and Texas — seven states created by cotton’s march west and south, plus one that, as the most industrialized state in the Union, profited disproportionately from the gearing of northern factory equipment to the southwestern whipping machine.

And it provided the basis for the creation of sophisticated financial products: slave-backed bonds that Baptist says were “remarkably similar to the securitized bonds, backed by mortgages on US homes, that attracted investors from around the globe to US financial markets from the 1980s until the economic collapse of 2008.”

Slave-backed bonds “generated revenue for investors from enslavers’ repayments of mortgages on enslaved people,” Baptist writes. “This meant that investors around the world would share in revenues made by hands in the field. Thus, in effect, even as Britain was liberating the slaves of its empire, a British bank could now sell an investor a completely commodified slave: not a particular individual who could die or run away, but a bond that was the right to a one-slave-sized slice of a pie made from the income of thousands of slaves.”

A formerly enslaved woman, photographed on a farm near Greensboro, Alabama in 1941.

5) The South seceded to guarantee the expansion of slavery.

There are many competing explanations for what moved the South to secede. Baptist argues that the main driving reason was an economic one: slavery had to keep expanding to remain profitable, and Southern politicians wanted to ensure that new western states would be slave-owning ones. “Ever since the end of the Civil War, Confederate apologists have put out the lie that the southern states seceded and southerners fought to defend an abstract constitutional principle of ‘state’s rights.’ That falsehood attempts to sanitize the past,” Baptist writes. At every Democratic party national convention, “participants made it explicit: they were seceding because they thought secession would protect the future of slavery.”

So why is it important to revisit this history now, nearly 150 years after slavery ended?

Baptist argues that our understanding — or misunderstanding — of slavery has policy implications for the present. (In that way, the book is complementary reading to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ much talked-about Case For Reparations). “If slavery was outside of US history, for instance — if indeed it was a drag and not a rocket booster to American economic growth — then slavery was not implicated in US growth, success, power and wealth,” Baptist writes. “Therefore none of the massive quantities of wealth and treasure piled by that economic growth is owed to African Americans.” Anyone who believes that, his book aims to show, really hasn’t heard the half of it.

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9 Devastating Actions White Slaves Masters Took to Convert Black People to Christianity

 

The Promise of Heaven

The most important aspect of Christianity for the enslaved was the promise of heaven — a promise made by plantation owners. This idea preached the notion that for all the suffering that is done in the physical world, your soul will be preserved and you will experience a hardship-free spiritual life, according to Slave Resistance, A Caribbean Study. What this did for enslaved Black people was give them hope for the future. Converted enslaved people’s belief in heaven allowed some to passively resist their plantation owners and focus on the afterlife. With that belief, all of the beatings and lashings meant nothing because in heaven the enslaved person would be rewarded and the master would be punished.

Constant Work

The vigorous, constant plantation work assigned by owners left the enslaved people hardly any time for themselves, and that included religious activities, according to christianitytoday.com. Some plantation owners required the enslaved to work even on Sunday, an intentional move to break them away from their religious regimen and softening them over time to accept whatever religion was presented to them by the plantation owners.

Blocked Communication

Plantation owners separated the enslaved people who spoke the same tribal language so they could not worship together and could be taught Christianity at the same time, according to an article titled TheInconceivable State of African-American Christianity on christianitytoday.com.

Separated Families

Moving family members from one another broke down the spirit of the enslaved, as they believed wholeheartedly in worshipping together, according to academia.edu in a study on the role of religion in Africa. With their family units broken, their African beliefs were broken, too, making them more willing to accepting another religion.

Demonstration of Power

When Africans were captured and brought to America by the Europeans, they often attributed the Europeans’ power to the power of the Europeans’ God. Therefore, it was often easy for some enslaved Africans to begin to worship the victorious Christian God in place of their own gods.

Catholics’ Conversions

Often, African practices were brought into Christianity in new and interesting ways as a way of luring the enslaved into Christianity and away from their religion, according to an article at the Mariners Museum called Captive Passage. Enslaved Africans in Roman Catholic nations often converted easily because of Catholicism’s ability to accommodate and absorb other beliefs.

Mixing of Religious Practices

Symbols and objects, such as crosses, were conflated with charms carried by Africans to ward off evil spirits. Christ was interpreted as a healer similar to the priests of Africa, according to PBS’ Slavery and the Making of America. In the New World, fusions of African spirituality and Christianity led to distinct new practices among enslaved populations, including voodoo or vodun in Haiti and Spanish Louisiana. Although African religious influences were also important among Northern Black people, exposure to Old World religions was more intense in the South, where the density of the Black population was greater.

Missionary Work in West Indies

Missionaries — from the Moravians, the Baptists and the Methodists — all engaged in the process of Christianization in the West Indies, according to an article by Jeffrey K. Padgett titled TheChristianization of Slaves in the West Indies. By the middle of the 18th century, Moravian chapels and mission houses were in populated areas of many of the British-controlled islands. Missionaries argued to planters that the enslaved needed religion and that planters also would benefit from the conversion.

Social Control

In the Caribbean colonies of Cuba and Saint-Domingue, religion was taught to enslaved Africans as a means of social control more than as a means to edify their souls, according to an article titled Slave Religion in Central and South America. Especially in the colonies’ early days, while the plantations were small and the enslaved population was not huge, plantation owners used religion to teach obedience. In Cuba and Brazil, Catholic saints were often equated with gods from Africa — generating familiarity for the enslaved.

 

Slavery may have ended, however the chains of religions still hold our minds.

Slavery may have ended, however the chains of religions still hold our minds. We were robbed of our names, history, and culture and did not have a promised land to go to.

The holy books have been the weapon of choice as when you systematically remove over generations a person from their innate understandings; you can rewrite their spiritual inclinations to favour your agenda.

When you own the chains to their mind and their path to the natural curiosity to understand themselves, you can design their reactions to defend you at their own expense.

As these concepts of God have only spoken when the holy books were created, people no longer have a direct relationship with God, they only have a relationship with the books. They mentally devour the books as these are the only words their god is ever going to say.

This is made worst by the fact that stories mentioned in the books happened over a thousand years ago and was not written about our lives today. When the slaves found the Promised Land did they live happily ever after?

The truth is in living colour, we have been created in belief. We are born into a paradigm where all the answers have been educated to us; however they just forgot to teach us how they arrived at them.

Hidden in plain view, we cannot see, feel, smell or touch this concept of God, even though it is everywhere. We are to follow or burn in hell, we must give our lives to get to heaven, there does not seem to be much free will to discover your own path.

To follow our Ancestors is deemed Satanic and a Black person; pre-slavery traditions are products of the Devil. When you appreciate that there are no positively regarded black religions, you have to ask what holy wars had we fought in to get such a bad name.

As we say a black person is not allowed to have their own. As regards to concepts of God, Amen Ra has been one of the concepts that have lasted over the 6000 modern history period.

The Egyptian Tutankhamen broken down to Tut –ankh-Amen, hidden in plain view, they said Amen at the end of their prayers too. As these modern religions are just abbreviations of older Egyptian understandings.

No one no longer calls Zeus to come to their aid, now that everything has been simplified to just God, one concept, easy to manage.

It seems when you stop calling the God they cease to exist. Do these gods need us to believe in them before they can help us or is that our belief in them enables them to exist? We have been mentally managed from day one.

The architects of this reality use religion as just one of the layers built into the external story line we call our lives. We are the ones who create the images, sounds and sensations we experience within ourselves. It`s our beliefs that give meaning to these internal experiences.

We have lost our connection to the energies within us that make all of what we do possible. We are no longer speaking to ourselves. We have been forced to look for answers outside of ourselves for problems coming from within us. It`s like looking for something in another person`s home that you lost in your own, you can never find it.

Hence we began to look externally for our creator as we have lost contact with ourselves. Religions seem to only deal with the external reality, people do not pray to connect to their inner creator self, and they are usually asking for material things, world peace is not even on the list anymore. God of this construct is really just an external idea, not a reality.

Like Jesus there is no evidence beyond the holy books that either of them ever existed. Existence is not evidence of God, existence is evidence of existence. We have been given beliefs and made a God from it.

The intelligences behind existence work from inside of you and enable you to create the external world as images in your mind. You are part of everything you experience as your mind speaks the light languages to translate the waveform of the frequency into solid looking objects.

There are things your mind no longer sees, their light languages are lost to us and therefore we are unable to create an image for them. If I can create light in my day dreams and night dreams, then I can generate light within me like the sun, however without the sun. The sun did not create us.

Religion is not soul food; it is more like cold comfort. The problem is the soul needs to be constantly stimulated with new concepts to challenge and to feel invigorated.

Religion gives your soul rules, which entraps it and limits you to the understanding of the writers of the holy books.

As the apparently only living Gods are not speaking anymore, people need more stimulus, they gravitate to the old ways, the ones calling them from within their soul.

Religion is memory based as people can only exchange holy books scriptures as opposed to their own original thinking. The person with the ability to recite more scriptures is regarded as the more gifted, not due to originality but to ability to recite script.

This can be good but this does not end the growing urge of the soul to get back to your real mission. The battle now commences with soul arguing with the programmed religious mind.

The soul will search for more whilst the mind condemns it. The mind has been programmed to look out for that pesky soul and will try and shut such curiosity to avoid the fear and the pain generated by the program for being disobedient.

The soul will want more and will want to hear alternative ideas to empower it, the programmers of the religions were ready for this and created Satan as a title to give to all those who needed more than the programmed script.

To think of yourself as evil and to trust in a god concept is real. This was security for longevity of the corruption of our minds.

The programming is ego based and needs to win the battle against the soul yearning to remain in control. The problem is that ego is not wisdom, so when it is challenged it does not increase in the breakdowns of the questions asked, but it may increase the sound volume and threats as well as insults.

They know what they are saying is not true and seek the company of other people in denial to make them feel better. No matter what they say the curiosity will not go away. They need to follow other spiritual paths as their soul demands it.

As we go along this path, we have remained strong to be able to ignore the wrath; the insults will become strong, yet with no breakdown of understanding.

As people give up their own spirituality to pursue religion, the holy books is all they have of their god. To challenge the book written by authors unknown is to abuse them; they feel too compelled to defend something that they do not know the origin of, does that sound natural to you?

God is not a man. Which gives you a hint who devised this plan, the truth requires a much deeper understanding. We travel to this dimension as we have life scripts to play out; we need to experience all the different characters. The ancients understood that life requires more than can be found in books, the library of the universe still can only be found inside us.

Spirituality requires that you ask questions of yourself, whilst religions requires you to rely on books to move forward. When you appreciate you cannot be wiser than your creator, the holy books have locked millions of soul`s minds down.

Sadly, slavery still exists as religion was the slave owner’s mental back door plan.

When you debate with someone that can only recite from the holy books, they tend to not listen to reason, their aggression increases with the depth of your challenge, they are trying to break you as opposed to exchange ideas with you and violent language or behaviour is threatened when you do not fall into line.

That sounds a lot like the slave master converting the slave to me. Is it only me that can see this.

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Free Yourselves from Mental Slavery!

I am going to talk  about the IGNORANCE and ILLITERACY of my RACE.  

Please, no one tell me that other RACES do it.

I could care LESS. I AM REFERRING TO NEGROES.

Now have you ever noticed that many of us will SPEND the BIG MONEY on name brand SHOES, CARS, GOLD CHAINS, etc, yet at the same time complain about how EXPENSIVE EDUCATION, FOOD, HEALTH CARE,etc. is?

Why? because many of us still have no CONCEPT of who we are, and for some reason feel that Material things will give us the CHARACTER,SELF LOVE, SELF WORTH, that so many of us are lacking.

We do NOT teach our children about VALUES AND ATTITUDE. NO! We buy them violent VIDEO GAMES ,cell phones, sneakers, and every thing else that THEY DO NOT NEED to be PRODUCTIVE ADULTS, and then when they also FAIL, WE BLAME THE SYSTEM.

I am always in AWE of how IMMIGRANTS from INDIA, CHINA, and many other countries, can leave their HOMELAND and MAKE IT ELSEWHERE, yet for many of us NEGROES, all we do is COMPLAIN, and continue to use SLAVERY as a CRUTCH, because more time WE FEEL SEH SOCIETY OWES US.

I have NOTICED how QUICK some of us are to CRY RACISM, yet we sit by SILENTLY while our BLACK MEN and WOMEN , boys and GIRLS, do NOTHING to EMULATE or UPLIFT our race.

We GLORIFY shows like LOVE AND HIP HOP, REAL HOUSE WIVES OF ATLANTA, yet when people like Dr. Bill Cosby SPEAKS up about what we should be doing, to make ourselves better, Many of us CRUCIFY HIM.

Many who do NOT have the BRAIN CAPACITY to figure out WHAT I AM SAYING, will no DOUBT draw for the UNCLE TOM card, but that is OK, as I would rather been seen as SUCH, (at least I have the CAPACITY TO THINK), than to be STUCK into a mentality that says the COLOR OF MY SKIN DETERMINES MY FATE, because that is RUBBISH.

We run up and down talking about BLACK HISTORY MONTH, yet so many of us have no CONCEPT of that HISTORY or where it even began, but we run wid it cause it meck we feel good.

What we should be is ASHAMED. ASHAMED of the fact that it is only ONE MONTH EVERY YEAR that many of us visit our ROOTS, or talk a bout the STRUGGLES made by many to get us where we are.

We should be ASHAMED that our children glorify people like BEYONCE and JAY Z, but know nothing about STEVE BIKO, APARTHEID or THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA, etc.

It should NOT take just ONE MONTH for us to FOCUS. Many of our young boys and so called MEN can do so right now by PULLING THEIR PANTS UP, STOP ACTING LIKE THUGS, AND STOP CALLING EACH OTHER “NIGGA”,( and those who think that saying WHATS UP MY NIGGA, is different from the WHITE MAN calling a person of colour NIGGER, are just IGNORANT and ILLITERATE).

Nothing GOOD can come from a word that was used to DEMEAN an ENTIRE RACE OF PEOPLE, GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER.

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Why the Rituals in the Church? Christians this is a must read

Every church has rituals and every church believes in traditions and interpretations that the Bible does not teach or specify. Where in the Bible does it say that the books of 3 John or James or Esther should be included in the Bible? Where in the Bible does it say that Communion should be practiced every Sunday? Where in the Bible does it say that God is of Three Persons, and not two or four? Where in the Bible does it say that washing feet should be done once a year rather than once a week? Where in the Bible does it say that Christians are expected to go to church at all? Where in the Bible does it say that prayer is more sacred when both hands are held together? Where in the Bible does it say that Christmas should be celebrated? Where in the Bible does it say that sermons must be made every Sunday, rather than once a month or not at all? All Christians worship in churches that practice rituals. Some are more elaborate than others, but we all have them and they are all treated as a means of receiving God’s grace in the Holy Spirit.

In ancient Judaism, the prophets had all instituted certain rituals and traditions behind Scripture and worship in order to enhance one’s spirituality. The apostles did the same thing, christianizing many of the ancient Jewish rituals and priestly hierarchy. According to Scripture, we are meant to worship the Lord with all our hearts, all our souls, all our minds, and all our bodies and strength. This means that we must pray with our hearts, minds, and bodies during worship. The more these things are done, and the more in balance these things occur, the more spiritually enhanced we become through church services.

Rituals were always meant to increase faith, advance oneself to higher states of spiritual perfection, and to prepare oneself for greater communion with God. Christianity inherited and passed on these same concepts, though because of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross for salvation, the apostles emphasized the spiritual power of sacrificing oneself to work out one’s salvation and to help others along the path of salvation. Thus, rituals were instituted carefully by the apostles and their disciples to involve much personal sacrifice in body, mind, and heart. And so, during Lent people are expected to pray and fast much more than usual for 40 days, and to fast every Wednesday and Friday from dairy products and meat all through the year. Christians are also encouraged to go to church more than once a week, to receive Communion as often as possible, to go to Confession frequently, to tithe, to submit to a spiritual authority in strict obedience, etc. This was how the early Christians lived and these practices continue in Eastern Orthodoxy.

This concept of sacrificing time, food, money, etc. had effects and ramifications beyond simply going through the motions or feeling the Holy Spirit. Those who willingly seek spiritual profit from sacrificing the mind and body through rituals, such as simply going to church without fail, fasting at the prescribed times without giving up, praying before bed, work, and meals all the time, blessing one’s house, submitting to spiritual authorities without question, etc., are able to advance toward spiritual perfection in ways they may not expect. One of the greatest gifts from the Holy Spirit through the Church’s apostolic rituals is increased wisdom and awareness of God and of one’s own strengths and weaknesses. This is especially true in the case of sacrificing one’s life. The Early Church began as a group of people who were persecuted constantly, whose lives were always at risk. The apostolic rituals, if practiced in the right spirit, prepare each Christian for the possibility of martyrdom.

If one cannot give up some time for church or prayer, how can he sacrifice his life for the Lord? If one cannot fast from food, how can he be spiritually stable enough to sacrifice his life for God? If one cannot sacrifice his money, even all his money, how can he believe that he is ready for martyrdom? Most Christians are not aware of how much they love this world and the lives they have here. Even good Christians during the Roman and Communist persecutions, as well as those suffering under Islam, have balked at martydom and imprisonment, preferring to compromise some of their Christian faith for safer and more comfortable lives. It is difficult even for Christians who have lived a life of constant worship through apostolic rituals to accept martyrdom and/or torture. This is why it is so important not just to have rituals, but to have the most apostolic rituals.

The ancient rituals of the Early Church and the Eastern Orthodox church, since they are one and the same, were designed precisely to purify one’s body and mind, to wrench souls from earthly attachments, as well as to prepare Christians for a total life of personal sacrifice, even torture and martyrdom. The idea that monks and nuns give up all their money, time, and even marriage is not because these people are over-reacting, it is because of the practical value of Christ’s teachings through the apostles in the Holy Spirit for themselves and for others who seek their wisdom and devotional experience. Though not all Christians must first be spiritually prepared through living a life of apostolic rituals before being martyred, in most cases spiritual preparation is necessary. Hence, there are a number of examples in Church history amplifying the need for devotional and ritualistic preparation before one’s martyrdom. For instance, in the 1780’s, Zacharias the Furrier from Arta, Greece during the Muslim occupation had become a Muslim and then repented. He became a monk for penance and then was guided by the Holy Spirit to be a martyr. He asked his abbot for permission to do this, but the abbot told him that he must first be spiritually prepared by fasting, praying, and holy reading for 40 days. During this time, he and the abbot talked, and the abbot understood that Zacharias was still not ready, since he had in his mind the martyrdoms of the Roman Empire. The abbot said that because the tyranny of Islam is worse than the tyranny of the Roman Empire, Zacharias required much more spiritual awareness. After some discussion, the abbot finally realized that he was spiritually ready to witness for the Lord Christ before the Muslims. So Zacharias went before the Muslim authorities and confessed that he had ceased being a Muslim, which in Islam is punishable by death. After the judge recognized that Zacharias was not insane (since, like the Communist system, Muslims often attribute rejections of Mohammed with mental problems), Islamic law required that he be tortured in order to force him to return to Islam. But Zacharias died in the process and was thus made a saint. Other stories from the martyrs repeat this idea of spiritual preparation for salvation and martyrdom.

There are many reasons why rituals are so important, especially the original apostolic rituals. But some of the most obvious are the concepts behind personal sacrifice in theoretical and practical bodily and mental imitation of Jesus Christ in His ministry and on the Cross. Rituals are bodily prayers which require some degree of mental sacrifice. Learning to submit to sacrifice and even to spiritually advance by it has always been the essence of Christianity. This is why apostolic rituals are so necessary for the faith and why the Early Christians and their successors have insisted that anyone who changes them or regards them as mere symbolic gestures has destroyed the Apostolic Faith to some extent.

Question: “Are there supposed to be any rituals in Christianity?”

Answer:In religious contexts, a ritual is a set form of worship. Rituals involve symbolic physical actions; some examples of rituals are genuflecting before entering a pew, making the sign of the cross, and lifting aloft the Host during the Catholic Mass.

Religion can be defined as “belief in a deity, expressed in conduct and ritual.” The two most common ingredients in religion thus defined are rules and rituals. To be a faithful adherent of Judaism or Islam, for example, a person must observe lists of do’s and don’ts. Ritual-based religion is most prominently displayed in Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant, liturgical High Church services, but it is also a mainstay of Buddhism and Hinduism.

The Mosaic Law prescribed a set of rituals for Israel’s worship of God. There were many ceremonial laws for them to observe. Some of those laws were very specific and involved the sprinkling of water, the sprinkling of blood, the waving of grain, or the washing of clothes. The Mosaic Law was fulfilled in Christ (Matthew 5:17). The rituals of the Old Testament were never intended to be a permanent part of worship, as Scripture clearly teaches: “[The gifts and sacrifices] are only a matter of food and drink and various ceremonial washings—external regulations applying until the time of the new order” (Hebrews 9:10, emphasis added). The “external regulations” are not binding on us today.

There is no New Testament mandate to include recitations, ceremonial objects, or symbolic physical gestures in our worship today. Our devotion is to the Lord Jesus, not to various rituals or liturgies. True Christianity, as derived from accurate interpretation of the Bible, is not rules-based or ritual-based. Rather, it is relationship-based. The living God through Jesus has made those who believe in Christ His own children (John 1:12).

The only “rites” the New Testament church is commanded to observe are the ordinances: baptism by immersion (Matthew 28:19) and communion (1 Corinthians 11:25). But, even then, no details are given to regulate the exact methods to use. Baptism, of course, requires water, and communion requires bread and “the cup.” Churches are free to baptize people in baptismals, lakes, swimming pools, or horse troughs. For communion, the Bible does not specify the frequency of the meal, the type of bread to use, the alcohol content in “the cup,” or exactly who should administer the ordinance. Churches are allowed some freedom in these matters.

All churches have a format that they typically follow, and this can be thought of as a “ritual.” Of course, it is good for everything to be done “in a fitting and orderly way” (1 Corinthians 14:40), and having a procedure to follow is not wrong. But, if a church is so liturgical and its structure so rigid that the Holy Spirit is not able to freely operate, liturgy has gone too far.

Additionally, liturgies or rituals designed by men are fallible and are often unscriptural. It is even possible to “nullify the word of God” with the traditions of men (Mark 7:13). Jesus warned against “vain repetitions” (Matthew 6:7), and many rituals held in churches today are just that. Repetitious prayers or creeds or songs can, over time, lead to dullness in worship rather than the free expression of one’s heart, mind, and soul before God (Matthew 22:34–40).

Are rituals wrong? No, not inherently.Emptyritual is wrong, as is any ritual that replaces, obscures, or detracts from a vibrant relationship with Christ. Are rituals commanded in the church? No, except for baptism and communion. God sees the heart, and He seeks those who worship Him “in the Spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). Rituals can be beneficial, but external rites should never be allowed to replace inner devotion.

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How do you get a People who once

How do you get a People who once occupied their minds and time with building civilizations, mapping the cosmos, and developing methods of living symbiotically within the world’s ecosystem, to now occupy their minds with securing vast amounts of Fiat currency and spending it on shit made in sweatshops by malnourished slaves?

How do you get a People who constructed complex societies that didn’t have a want or need for armies, prisons, orphanages, or nursing homes to be so dysfunctional that they cannot even organize themselves to maintain proportional ownership of homes and business in the regions of a stolen land that their oppressors allow them to dwell?

How do you drive a People who not only mothered and fathered all the rest of humanity, but gave them their very humanity and culture, how do you drive them to feel so inferior that they seek equality with their own bastard, mutated children?

How do you get a people who created the very concept of god, who created hundreds of gods, who gave the world spirituality; how do you get those same people to not only accept the degenerate gods of their oppressors, but also to embrace the irrational religious dogma of the enslaver’s religions?

Answer:
By subjecting them to centuries of unrelenting violence and depravity, while robbing them of an understanding of, and connection to their history.

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How Come Black Folks Dont Run When They Hear The Name Jesus?

When Black folks hear sirens, see flashing lights, or someone yells out “police,” they look around and some just start running- weather they’ve done anything or not. They already know from their past experience with the police nothing good could come from encountering them. The only thing police mean to Black folks is false charges, imprisonment, beat downs and possibly getting shot in the back. But strangely and inexplicably, Black folks don’t run when they hear the name Jesus.

The name of the first slave ships to kidnap Black folks from Africa was the Mother Mary and The GoodShip Jesus. The logo in front of The Good Ship Jesus was two Africans bound back to back. The head of all Christian churches, the Pope, said that your ancestors were infidels and it was the white man’s Christian duty to enslave them and teach them about Jesus Christ. Christians built churches over top of the slave dungeons where Africans were shackled. Every Sunday your great, great, great grandparents would hear them singing hymns toJesus while many of them lay raped and dying on the dungeon floors. If that were you could you imagine your grandchildren singing about Jesus and telling people he died for them when it was actually you who died for them? Columbus killed millions of the indigenous population here in America; literally telling some of them he was sending them to meet Jesus.

The on again, off again Christian, King James (who Black folks love his Bible so much) was a slave owner; he peddled in Black flesh. Black folks have never understood that the bible wasn’t intended for them and was compiled by all Europeans; no Blacks or Africans were involved. Christian ministers used the Bible to justify their treatment of our great, great grandparents (1Timothy 6:1-5) and told them they should act as the “good book” says. The racist mobs that use to lynch your cousins down south did so in the name of Jesus. These Christian mobs often hung Black men, women and children as soon as Sunday service was over; all in the name of Jesus. Christian televangelist Pat Robertson said Blacks in Haiti were being punished for their slave uprising; basically being punished for refusing to be good Christian slaves.

The pale, white, Christian minister Jim Jones killed more Black people at one time then any other man in modern history. Some of the Black folks were even running around calling him “father” and “dad.” In 1978 out of the 900 people he killed, telling them they were going to be with Jesus, over 700 were Black folks. Jones forced or coerced his followers to drink a sweet, poisonous concoction; hence the term people use today; “drink the Kool-Aid.” And guess what; the majority of people who escaped death that day were all white folks! David Koresh took his Jesus Christtheology to a whole new level. He told his followers that he himself was actually Jesus. And Black folks believed that too. In fact, they believed it so much dozens of Black folks and their children were shot or burned to death right along with him during the 1993 Waco siege.

George W. Bush said he put his faith in Jesus Christas he sat back and watched all those Black folks starve, drown and die during hurricane Katrina.Christian missionaries who go to Africa in the name of Jesus are still there injecting AIDS, Ebola and other diseases into the unknowing populace. Did you forget, it was a Christian who put Anthrax in your own mailbox? Black folks are extremely reluctant to admit that they have been conned. Instead, they work tirelessly to bring others into their Jesus Christmindset trying to reassure themselves that white folks are right and their own Black ancestors were wrong; never bothering to research the information for themselves.

Every Sunday your pastor tells you the same thing slave masters of old use to tell their slaves aboutJesus. That in of itself seems strange doesn’t it? Why would the slave master give the slave his religion? Answer: To keep him enslaved. The Negro pastor who tells you it’s not the messenger- it’s the message is exactly right. And that message has been clear and consistent for over 450 years now; when Black folks hear the name Jesus….they should run!

**Educate**

The Good Ship Jesus | The Beginning of the British Slave Trade

The Good Ship Jesus

What has come to be referred to as “The Good Ship Jesus” was in fact the “Jesus of Lubeck,” a 700-ton ship purchased by King Henry VIII from the Hanseatic League, a merchant alliance between the cities of Hamburg and Lubeck in Germany. Twenty years after its purchase the ship, in disrepair, was leant to Sir John Hawkins by Queen Elizabeth.

Hawkins, a cousin of Sir Francis Drake, was granted permission from Queen Elizabeth for his first voyage in 1562. He was allowed to carry Africans to the Americas “with their own free consent” and he agreed to this condition. Hawkins had a reputation for being a religious man who required his crew to “serve God daily” and to love one another. Sir Francis Drake accompanied Hawkins on this voyage and subsequent others. Drake, was himself, devoutly religious. Services were held on board twice a day.

John Hawkins Coat of Arms
A bound slave adorns John Hawkins’ coat of arms.
Off the coast of Africa, near Sierra Leone, Hawkins captured 300-500 slaves, mostly by plundering Portugese ships, but also through violence and subterfuge promising Africans free land and riches in the new world. He sold most of the slaves in what is now known as the Dominican Republic. He returned home with a profit and ships laden with ivory, hides, and sugar. Thus began the British slave trade.

On his return to England Queen Elizabeth, livid, assailed Hawkins charging that his endeavor, “, was detestable and would call down vengeance from heaven upon the undertakers.” When Elizabeth became fully aware, however, of the profits to be made she joined in partnership with Hawkins and provided him with the “Jesus of Lubeck,” a.k.a., “The Good Ship Jesus.”

A later slaving expedition in 1567, consisting of five ships and the “Jesus of Lubeck,” met with resistance from the Spaniards at St Juan d’Ulloa in Mexico. Since the slave trade was illegal Spanish colonists usually required a charade of force from British ships, after which they would buy slaves at a discount. This time, however, the Spanish attacked the British ships and the “Jesus of Lubeck,” cumbersome and difficult to maneuver, was sunk and the crew slaughtered. Hawkins escaped with Drake on a smaller ship.

Hawkins, his piratic ambitions dashed, returned to England and remained there in the service of the Queen. He gained distinction for his pivotal role in defeating the Spanish Armada and was knighted in 1588.

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White People’s Fear Of Revenge For Slavery Is ‘Deeply Rooted In American Culture

Renowned linguist and activist Noam Chomsky has been speaking with philosopher George Yancy as part of a feature for the New York Times in which he discusses race and racism in America.  In the most recent installment, Chomsky discusses  the roots of American racism and the legacy of black enslavement and subjugation in America, going into detail about how “fears that the victims might rise up and take revenge are deeply rooted in American culture.”

The conversation begins with Yancy pointing out that when terrorism and the United States are discussed, there is often an omission of “the fact that many Black people in the United States have had a long history of being terrorized by white racism.” Chomsky elaborates by saying, “We…cannot allow ourselves to forget that the hideous slave labor camps of the new ‘empire of liberty’ were a primary source for the wealth and privilege of American society.” As Chomsky puts it, “The America that ‘Black people have always known’ is not an attractive one.”

When the exploited labor force of slaves was no longer available because of the abolition of slavery, “Blacks were arrested without real cause and prisoners were put to work for…business interests. The system provided a major contribution to the rapid industrial development from the late 19th century.” The Thirteenth Amendment’s Exception Clause, allowing slavery to continue if a person was convicted of a crime, was being used to its fullest extent. Reagan’s War on Drugs provided more Black bodies to be exploited for their labor, leading to what Michelle Alexander terms, the new Jim Crow.

While slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration have been the source of innumerable tragedies, Chomsky points out that perhaps the greatest tragedy is America’s refusal to acknowledge its own history of oppression, violence and genocide. Chomsky describes it as an ‘intentional ignorance,’ that compels Americans to put the horrors of slavery, genocide, racism, and mass incarceration, “…behind us and march on to a glorious future, all sharing equally in the rights and opportunities of citizenry.”

While this may sound like a compelling ideal, reality is much uglier. Black people in America continue to fall at the bottom of nearly every statistical indicator for wealth, economics, education, and health while white America seems to all to easily forget how much their “wealth and privilege was created in no small part by the centuries of torture and degradation of which [white people] are the beneficiaries,” and Black people are the victims.

Hundreds of years of forced labor, racism and subjugation have inevitably led to resentment and anger, and Chomsky does not shy away from acknowledging that white people have long been gripped by the fear that those they have oppressed will rebel against the forced racial hierarchy.

Chomsky states, “Some of the slave-owners, like Jefferson, appreciated the moral turpitude on which the economy relied. But he feared the liberation of slaves, who have ‘ten thousand recollections’ of the crimes to which they were subjected. Fears that the victims might rise up and take revenge are deeply rooted in American culture, with reverberations to the present.” Alongside this acknowledgement, Chomsky admits that there is not easy answer to ending racism, no magic wand that can erase hundreds of years of violence and terrorism against nonwhite American citizens.

SOURCE

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