The list of atrocities that occurred against Zelensky yesterday is long.
What strikes me also, is the full circle since Trump’s first impeachment, when Zelensky first came on my radar. The audio evidence of Trump on the phone threatening to withhold aid unless Zelensky produced an accusation of Hunter Biden was met by Trump with denial and discrediting of witnesses. Trump, his handlers, and the GOP on the committee effectively buried that evidence under denial, deflections and counterattacks, knowing Trump’s quid pro quo of Zelensky was impeachment-worthy. (It’s why Blagojevich and others in government have been convicted and imprisoned, it’s illegal when involving blackmail, bribes, etc.)
Now, though, Trump is doing the same thing to the same person, at an egregious level. They no longer hide their crime and shakedown, they proudly record and live-televise it.
It took less than six years for half of America to accept and applaud what they used to hide and deny.
Where does our legal, moral and ethical devolution stand on the long list of atrocities? – I hate to acknowledge it, it is so terrifying:
The public view of many, of what is right and what is wrong, has lowered to an unthinkable level.
That is the foundation from which all present and future atrocities can occur without fear of consequences.
Regarding one person, Zelensky, we can measure the U.S. baseline of law, ethics, and morality: It was crumbling 2019; in 2025, it is unspeakably and unforgivingly low.
Lies. They seem to have the upper hand. Truths keep fighting to overcome the lies, but as soon as they surface to be heard and seen, more and more lies are dumped, smothering the truths.
People deliver the lies, so those people are guilty.
People choose to believe the lies, so those people are guilty also.
What could possibly be good about this time in America?
You have to back up from the nitty gritty details to see it. You have to rise above the trees to see the forest. You have to remove the masks to see who people really are.
What good could there be in discovering that the hearts of many people are horrible? What good could there be to learn that those people you trusted and believed to be good, are not?
The pain of discovery is real. Disheartening. Discouraging. Devastating. Wave after wave of people in your life are falling away, as people’s hearts are exposed.
They choose the lies. They adore the lies. They idolize the liars.
They defend abusers. They side with destroyers. The more their power, the stronger their bond of allegiance to them.
They applaud dehumanization and disposal of people. They shake their fists and raise angry voices to anyone who objects.
They choose injustice.
They despise mercy for those they choose to hate.
What could possibly be good about this time in America?
They have found their tribe. Their comrades come out of the woodwork when you attempt an appeal for righteousness. You are overpowered with bold, aggressive words and actions. There is no limit to their commitment to defend their position. Make a simple statement of truth in the presence of lies, and you will be shamed at the least. Persist, and the power tribe appears out of the shadows to gang up against you.
They live to overpower righteousness.
Persist further, and the aggression increases against you. God forbid you find your own tribe to march against their madness; they will happily pull out their weapons to attack. They are hoping for the appearance of cause to get to do it. Don’t think they exercise the same restraint you do.
They want to do harm.
And they can with no consequences. Think Kyle Rittenhouse. Think Capitol rioters. They know they can do the unspeakable as long as they align with the current federal power.
They take. They steal. They believe themselves entitled to do so. They do not feel at all bad about it.
They remove your right to safety.
Distilled to its simplest form:
You have learned who makes you unsafe.
You used to trust those people. They are among your family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, community, churches and organizations, police and firefighters, local, state, and federal elected officials, county, state and supreme courts, and local to highest administrations.
What could possibly be good about this time?
Back out of the trees to see the forest.
From a larger perspective, what is happening? How is this anything but evil?
From this distant viewpoint, go back in time, before you knew. Back when you thought that person was authentic in their kindness. Back when you thought your love for a person was requited. Back when you believed them to be respectful, honorable, noble, unselfish, and concerned for the good of all. Back when you believed what they said, because you credited them as being honest.
Fast forward to now. To knowing. To seeing.
It’s terrible to know and to see the terrible truth, yes.
But it’s also good, because it’s good to know. To have the masks stripped from the faces of people. To have the facades removed. To see people for who they are, not who they pretended to be for so long.
God is exposing the hearts of people.
To be sure, none of the evil is being caused by God. Evil exists because people are choosing it.
God leads people who are willing away from evil, not toward it. He turns all things together for good. He doesn’t forsake us.
People are wondering when God is going to come on the scene and help the oppressed and downtrodden.
He’s already doing it. He has been all along.
Yes, people are piling up the evil, seemingly without any hindrances, and evil appears to prevail unabated … but …
We see their hearts now, don’t we? Their hearts, that were secure and hidden for so long, are laid bare, aren’t they? They have been exposed.
We can check that off as the first of many conquests to come for good over evil. That’s no small thing.
Think of a chronological continuum. At the far left, just before we embarked on this time in America, we still assumed the best about most people. People who didn’t deserve to be counted as good were given our trust.
Because we didn’t know. Back then, only they and God knew what they were hiding. Many were great actors; they hid it very well.
But think about it: They were all those bad things back then that they are now. All that time, you were being duped. Conned. Bamboozled. Used and abused.
Learning that so many people are actually so bad is very, very painful, but also critical to know.
Every day someone’s heart is exposed for what it is, is a good day. Not a pain-free day, but a good day.
Each day that you know the truth, you are less vulnerable to being duped. Conned. Bamboozled. When you know the truth, you are positioned to rise above them. You are better positioned to be wise. You get to go forward, better informed about who you should trust or not.
If you are left with no one after your people have been exposed, you are still better positioned than any time in your life to rise up and go forward. Free of the anchors. Free of the defrauders and the inauthentic. Free of the con artists and liars. Free of the evil-hearted. Free of the thieves and destroyers.
Imagine the heights you can soar with all those anchors removed. Think of a hot air balloon that has never left the ground in all its existence. It has been tethered by countless ropes by countless people posing as helpers. When those people have been exposed as working to ground you instead of helping you rise in goodness, you need to release their ropes tied to you. Simply remove them from the basket of you, the hot air balloon.
And rise. Rise. Rise.
Once you rise above the trees, you can look back on the forest. And see …
There is good already happening. God has already been at work.
There is more to come on the continuam. This is just the beginning of how he is turning all things together for good. It started with exposure.
Exposure is God’s policy.
1 Corinthians 4:5: “Do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart”.
1 Corinthians 14:25: “The secrets of his heart will be made known”.
Luke 8:17: “There is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed”.
1 Samuel 16:7: “The Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart”.
Luke 12: 1-3 Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another, Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, saying: “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.
A blog post I wrote in 2015 has resurfaced and is being reread this week.
Think of it as a time capsule being pulled from a foundation. Will opening it reveal the change that is expected when time capsules are opened?
This blog happened to be on one topic of many, that a growing number of Christians focus their attacks on. It is an example of people being labeled, profiled, and lumped into a group, as a way to dehumanize them.
Why is this done to people by bullies? So that bullies feel justified in their primal desire to dominate others. They “enimize” Individuals to feel right about condemning them.
As you read the original post of 2015, ask yourself:
Did the bullies of the Church of 2015 use the time since then to retreat from their chosen road of aggression and hate? Or have they increased in numbers and self-righteousness on the exact same road they were on in 2015?
Since bully Christians tie their views and actions to God, claiming he endorses them and they represent him, consider what God might think of their use of time: Was it time he purposed for them to alter course? Was the past decade a time period for his ongoing mercy and long-suffering patience toward those who call themselves his? Was it a time that he refrained from unleashing wrath though it was warranted?
Consider: What happens when nothing changes despite an allotted time period of God’s mercy? Does he let us go into the fair consequences of our stubborn and committed choices?
Are we at the point of moving from his mercy to his wrath? Will consequences break through the hardened hearts and minds of those who declare themselves godly but are anything but? Will a state of his wrath facilitate change when mercy did not?
We can wait and watch together.
Time will tell.
My original blog, dated August 6, 2015, entitled,
“Knock, and the Door Will Be Opened.”
Since the USA recently legalized gay marriage, social media has been abuzz with opinions on the topic. I intended to defer to greater minds, and to those it affects directly, but the following Facebook post by an acquaintance pulled me into the fray:
There seems to be some confusion brought into the Church about whether Gay people will go to heaven. Apparently, God Himself has something to weigh in on this subject (for those with ears to hear what the Spirit says to the Church).
“Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11
I’ve overlooked the chastisements and judgments of her varied posts over the months since we met, as well as during a social event she invited me to, but this time stirred a response. I commented on her post, mentioning verses from 1 Cor. 13 about love, and God’s call for us to love, not condemn. Immediately, she sent me texts on my phone and private messages on Facebook, saying I was a voice for Satan, and an “accuser of the brethren”. I was still recoiling from those words, when she berated me at length on her post, including use of scriptures meant to silence a rebuttal.
Plenty of scriptures came to my own mind in support of love, but I knew they weren’t welcome. I typed a comment, “I have no words. I thought I was allowed a point of view. Why is promoting God’s love a reason to attack me?”, but it didn’t go through. I had already been blocked. Unfriended. Accused but denied a response. Rejected and ejected. Over and done in mere minutes.
The unjust and bizarre attack was meant to intimidate, silence and to shame me, just as the post was meant to do to gays. To be honest, I was shaken, especially by the amount of hate that was unleashed toward me. It didn’t escape notice that most of it was spewed offline where nobody could witness it. I had experienced a taste of the hatred that so many people endure from a few “Christians”.
Why does one woman’s behavior matter enough to address it in a blog post? Because this woman and her husband started and pastor a church, and additionally run an area-wide ministry to “lead leaders of the church”. How many others are being bullied, intimidated, accused and condemned?
So, in defense of the bullied, I challenge the bully …
What was the purpose of a post condemning gays to hell? Who was the intended audience for your “lesson”? It was a public setting, so I presume it was meant for any-and-all to read and take heed. I’ve wracked my brain for how it could be helpful to anyone, and have come up blank.
If people who are gay or lesbian read it, you created an illusion of a massive wall between them and God. Instead of hearing good news, such as John 3:17, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him”, they are met with an impenetrable wall with a closed door, and this sign over it: “Condemnation Church.” Why would anyone want to enter through that door?
Why do people who have received God’s forgiveness and grace themselves, play bouncer and dictate who is allowed to know God and who is not? Why not do as we are asked, which is love others as he loves us, and share indiscriminately the truths that have given us life?
God is not exclusionary, and the (door)way to him is not via people. People may present themselves as the hoop to jump through, but they are not Christ. Imperfect beings that we are, we often ignore what we want, conclude some issues in the Bible are obsolete or indicative of the culture of the time (such as owning slaves, or the practice of polygamy and having concubines), while insisting on the infallibility of the Bible when using scriptures that reinforce our current beliefs.
Why don’t we admit that we aren’t all-knowing? Why don’t we suspend judgment during times of change and controversy? It’s foolish not to, because our dogma and arrogance is very evident to others – we are but resounding gongs. We think we have the monopoly on all truth, and everybody else is wrong. We’re certain everyone notes our rightness, our superiorness, but all others hear is a piercing, clanging cymbal.
While we’re playing God, we are only helping the enemy’s cause, not God’s. We are the reason people are repelled from God.
We abuse God’s Word to puff up our pride, and flaunt our authoritative superiority over innocent people. We don’t even bother to ask God what his view is of others. We accuse people who don’t agree with us of not “having ears to hear” his Spirit, while it is we who won’t listen. We won’t humble ourselves and ask for God’s guidance, because if we do, we’re likely to be knocked off our pedestals — for he humbles those who exalt themselves. If we listen to him, he might tell us the very person we are condemning pleases him; he loves and approves of them; he or she loves him back and is malleable clay in his, the potter’s, caring hands.
He might unleash his wrath on us, not our victims, if we had “ears to hear”. So we don’t ask him anything, and we don’t listen. We keep busy, condemning. We don’t even need God’s presence or direction; we already know which scriptures to use to ambush anyone who disagrees with us.
Still, somehow, the Bible transcends its misuse by humanity to represent God’s perfect nature. In the midst of those texts that mystify and divide, there are wonders to fill a lifetime. Instead of picking and choosing the scriptures to reinforce dogma, why not share the extensive wonders of God’s truths? Like this wonder:
All have free access to a loving God through a simple acceptance of Christ. Jesus wasn’t speaking of a select, exclusive group of people when he said,
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8
Again, as we near 2025, those questions to consider:
Did the bullies of the Church of 2015 use the time since then to retreat from their chosen road of aggression and hate? Or have they increased in numbers and self-righteousness on the exact same road they were on in 2015?
Since they tie their views and actions to God, claiming he endorses them and they represent him, I wonder, what does God think of their use of time? Was it time he purposed for them to alter course? Was the past decade a time period for his ongoing mercy and long-suffering patience toward those who call themselves his? Was it a time that he refrained from unleashing wrath though it was warranted?
What happens when nothing changes despite an allotted time period of God’s mercy? Does he let us go into the fair consequences of our stubborn and committed choices?
Are we at the point of moving from his mercy to his wrath? Will consequences break through the hardened hearts and minds of those who declare themselves godly but are anything but? Will a state of his wrath facilitate change when mercy did not?
The following is a comment I wrote on Facebook on this date in 2019, when someone I know insisted Trump was doing all the right things in office. No matter what transpired, this person defaulted to Trump’s narrative to approve it. He consistently propagated the mantra instead of acknowledging reality.
November 2019 was also during the time an inquiry was launched over Trump’s quid pro quo in Ukraine.
As you read this five-year-old comment, go back in time to what was happening then. Then consider if anything in Trump, or in his followers, have changed.
Then, if you call yourself a Christian, ask yourself …
At the forks in the road of your personal decisions regarding Trump, did you choose God? …
Or did you choose Trump?
November 21, 2019.
Trump’s mantra has been that he would, and is now “draining the swamp”. To his loyalists, this covers every move he makes, every person he ejects, and every replacement he makes. He’s “just following through on his election promise to drain the swamp”.
This term, by the way, is used only by people who adopt his views. They believe him. He says he’s ridding government of corruption. They believe him because he said it. In the face of hard evidence of Trump’s longstanding past corruption, they adamantly deny he is anything but honest and upstanding. In the face of evidence of his corrupt practices happening now, in office, they say, “He’s draining the swamp”. End of discussion. They are right and everyone observing reality and sounding the alarms are wrong.
Why would they believe that Trump himself does not practice corruption? He circumvents the law. Isn’t that the definition of corruption?
His past as a businessman was riddled with legal troubles. He extorted students who enrolled in his university, which he falsely presented as accredited. He has outstanding cases from previous business dealings in which he failed to pay for services provided. He refuses to release his tax records.
Currently, he refuses to cooperate with subpoenas, and advises his underlings to do the same. The case in Ukraine is one example of how he operates apart from transparent, ethical and legal avenues. His exposure as corrupt has been confirmed under oath seven to eight times this week by people who were there.
What he has done is both unethical and illegal. His supporters morph factual exposure of his corruption into a conspiracy theory or proof of a deep state. “They’re determined to wrongfully accuse and evict him. It’s a witch hunt.” And they believe him. So they never hold him to account.
That they choose to believe him over evidence is the right of every pro-Trumper, but to do so is beyond alarming. It is the mindset of “the Holocaust never happened”; the thinking of “the Earth is flat”.
To deny facts in preference for being “right”, or unyielding in an existing view, is dangerous to others, and dangerous to the one who chooses it. It is the stuff of deluded minds. By the time one is deluded, he doesn’t realize that he is.
“Trump is God’s chosen for such a time as this”, they repeat. No amount of challenging their chosen Biblical arguments with contradicting Biblical arguments changes their stance.
As for tying Trump to God, consider who God is, and His words. God views those who lead others astray as having “blood on their hands”.
Yet supporters of Trump view him as merely “imperfect”, “like we all are”. “He’s just saying what we all are thinking.” (No, no we aren’t all thinking that way. Decent people never think that way. But now we know YOU think that way.)
We are being led to immediately reject truths and whitewash Trump’s behavior and actions, regardless the degree of ethics, morality, or law. We are being led to discredit anyone and everyone who sheds light on the truth. We are even being led to believe in conspiracy theories and the Deep State. People I know actually believe that utter nonsense, and propagate it. People I knew to be intelligent have given away their minds to lies.
Many of these same people preach that God is Truth and Satan is the father of lies. Then they choose the lies. If that doesn’t reveal that they have turned their backs to God, I don’t know what does.
Yet they insist they are in truth and God has endorsed them and their father-of-lies politics, and fellow believers who don’t agree are the “accusers of the brethren”. I’ve been called that a few times for challenging a lie promoted by someone from the radicalized-politicized-religious right. These people are not fiction, they surround us, and are calling themselves and Trump “God’s chosen”.
If anyone without Trump’s power and resources did any one of the things that he has done or said, they would be swiftly fired from their jobs at the very least; removed from even low level offices; brought to impeachment hearings as Clinton was for sexual immorality; fined for libel or slander; or imprisoned for fraud, obstruction of justice, extortion, and bribery.
Yet Trump’s converts stand by their man.
So, Christians who use the Bible and God himself to defend Trump …
Is it not in the Bible to be wise who we associate with, and who we conform to? When it’s not God we’ve conformed to, it is obvious in our language right away. For example, those who conform to a specific political party instead of Him use the verbiage of their influencer: verbiage such as “the swamp”, “deep state”, “never-Trumpers”, “witch hunt”, etc.
Most critically, whom we adhere to sets the course of our lives. It is the fork in the road — go with the road of God or not, that is each person’s prerogative — but to know God and then choose an alternative route, is to knowingly refuse Him.
That should set off massive alarm bells …
Unless it’s too late, and a person is so far down the road of choice that he is out of earshot of God’s guidance, discipline, and warnings. Those who knowingly, willingly reject Him in favor of an alternate option, shouldn’t be surprised when He ultimately allows them to go their own way.
Will He protect the person who does that? They can demand it, and believe it will happen for them, but is He required to exempt them from His justice when they have rejected Him? Must He oblige them with mercy, forgiveness, and exoneration without their contrition, change of course, and humility? Must He do that for them merely because they demand it of Him?
You have to throw out the Bible and the identity of God to land on that certainty. Maybe you already have.
Music video by Brandi Carlile performing The Joke (LIVE at the 61st GRAMMYs). 2017 Brandi Carlile Band, LLC under exclusive license to Elektra Records for the United States and WEA International Inc. for the world outside of the United States. A Warner Music Group Company.
Cindi Gale 