THE PRIME DIRECTIVE

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To Kick Things Off - Let's talk a little about the morality of The Prine Directive, as enunciated in so many Star Trek episodes. I think as a member of virtually any religion we can pretty much agree that the Prime Directive sucks. Out task here on earth is not just to "be happy" but to be a Light to the world, as Jesus commanded. We are supposed to let our Higher Principles radiate out to the rest of the world. Some people have said, "I hate a know-it-all". I don't hate know-it-alls. Not one who in truth really does "know it all" and brags about it. You should be glad that a "know-it-all" is there. You can learn from him even if you don't like him personally. What I really dislike is the so-called "know it all" who doesn't know anything but claims he does. Bob Dylan in one of his songs says, "Do you take me for such a fool to think that I'd make contact with one who tries to hide what he doesn't know to begin with". I also hate people who say "I could tell you what you need to know but you're not ready to hear it yet". What does that mean? It sounds like a person hiding behind smoke and mirrors. I don't like either Jesus or his impostor representative on the radio saying "I could tell you what heaven is like but you lack the capacity to understand it". That's an insult to our intelligence. Give it the old college try. Isn't that what your father tells you? "You'll never know untill you try".

I think an excellent example of where Captain Piccard disregarded the prime directive himself, or at least was caught in the middle of it was where he encountered a guy- a real jerk- who claimed to have come from the future to "observe" the past. Personally I don't like being "observed". I can't picture some artist just sitting there on a hill with a canvas as a bloody Civil War battle is raging and he's hired to paint it. Anyhow, Captain Piccard was faced with a moral delema when he had to decide whether to intervene to save a planet that was undergoing climactic changes where the atnosphere was blocking out the sun and soon millions would freeze to death due to a global ice age. Piccard wanted to try some expiriment where the atnosphere was burned off that would let the sun through, but if there was even a tiny percentage error the whole atnosphere would burn up and the planet would be in a vacuum. Piccard asked the traveler from the future what he should do and was taunted with the reply, "You know I can't intervene in the Past". Piccard finally developed the balls to say "I don't give a damn about your so-called future. To me it hasn't happened yet. I have to make a decision with what I know here today". That's what is known in the real world as courage. I sometimes wonder whether Christians have courage because they have their little insurance policy of eternal bliss in Heaven, so they think, and any lack of character down here will be lost in the sands of time when their expected future arrives. There's one thing about morality and that is that it is practiced when you don't think anyone is looking. (Selah)

Man has to fight off his lower animal urges. The human brain is a layered affair. There is the higher brain and then there are more primal, primitive parts of man's brain that he shares with the lower vertibrates. Some would say this points to evolution. The thing is virtually every other animal is living up to its full potential. A dog or a bird or a deer will act on instincts that are thousands, if not million years old in terms of caring for its young and such. Even reptiles that abandon their eggs after laying them in the sand- - seem to have God-given instincts. Once hatched a lizzard or a dinasaur of old will break out of the shell and make a mad dash to the water on sheer instinct, before some predator can catch and eat him. Man seems to be the only "animal" that does not live up to his potential. Some people may talk about "Animal rights". Well, the way we treat lower forms of life is a reflection on our values, not there. We may want to save some species of mountain lion that in itself has only beastly instincts and has no time for lofty thoughts like ecology or preservation of species. Of course animals have themselves benefitted from being around human beings. They live longer and are generally healthier, believe it or not. It's been a saying of mine in my writings that I would rather live with a dog that was raised around moral human beings- - than a human being, who wasn't. Dogs take on certain traits from learning to socialize with higher forms such as ourselves. And it's ludicris to suppose that we could not learn something from "God", were "God" the sort of being that wanted to tell us anything. If an animals personality can be improved from being around humans, then a human should be vastly improved from being around God. The fact that said "transformation" hasn't seemed to have happened is only a reflection on God, or rather, God's seeming reluctance to get involved in human history or dreams in any manner.

I would like to stress again this notion of Monday morning quarterbacking. As the beer commercial says, "You only go around once in life". If there's anything more, it's only speculation. You can't live your life on a speculation; you need to live your life on facts as you have known and lived them. There is another Next Generation Star Trek episode where Piccard was given the chance to avoid getting into a fight in his youth because said fight caused medical complications later on. That is, he regretted getting into the fight till he was shown by the being "Q" that he would have been much less a man and much more a mousey individual were to let this new spirit of "caution" get the better of him. In some ways young people are more in touch with life and reality than older people, because they're there, in the moment. They are not looking at an incident through twenty or thirty years of practiced guilt and naustalgia or otherwise distorted or rehearsed memory. Frank Sinatra sang, "Regrets- I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention". Pray we could all live our lives like this. I can't picture looking over my own life, "You know I really would have been happier as a teenager if I had had the mental logic and reasoning of a man of fifty". No, no!

It's been my thought for years now that the two biggest faults of Christians - - you know the ones - - is that they are hypocrites and cowards. It's wrong to say that the church contains hypocricy; the church is hypocricy. In the same way, so I'm told, that liver is one meat that can't be made kosher because it's virtually impossible to get the blood out of a liver. In terms of cowardess- - they will face a fierce enemy in Iraq, and this is to their credit. But they are scared spitless of that neighbor down the street because he's a practicing Athiest.

I would like you to briefly think of four animals that Christians resemble.
THE RAT: The first is the rat. A rat is an animal that races through a maze to get it's food. This is like an infant who cries to get food and knows he'll get it by crying. I wonder whether in time the rat comes to believe that it's his running through the maze and presses the bar that causes the food to appear. It would not be the first time people got cause and effect confused. Do you know that a hundred and fifty years ago that a hundred percent of the people who ate carrots eventually died? What a shocking fact. I think about that one every time I light up a cigarette. Christians think if they make a "decision" for Christ and subsequently get a lucky break in life that somehow one caused the other. This is delusiona thinking.

THE APE: Apes are a curious breed because ape development actually exceeds human beings' development. I am told that a two and a half year old ape could actually take care of a two and a half year old toddler. I have never liked Apes. I guess it's just too much raw "ape" emotion for me. They think they're something they're not and after the passage of enough time, the whole world knows they're not. So it is with many church men.

THE SABER TOOTHED TIGER Here we find savagry in action. Even the comon feline has this trait. A tom cat has sex with a female and she has kittens. The first thing that happens is the mother cat doesn't want to have sex any more. But another tom cat comes along and sees this and thinks, "I know what to do. I'll kill the kittens and then her hormones will chance and she'll want to have sex again to have more kittens to care for". And so it is. Church Pastors, when they first take over a church seek to get strong members out of the church. If possible they will evicerate a church of most of its members so they can "have members after their own heart". This isn't just hypothetical. I've seen three instances of it. There has been the case of Gene Scott on television, and I've seen two instances of it in real life.

THE HONEY BEE: First one of the Drones gets picked by the Queen bee to have sex with her and so becomes the King bee. Aparently they have sex in the "consort flight" and after the copulation the King Bee dies. Of course a "Queen" in either the ant or bee world has to be almost born that way. They are groomed from birth with special necters and pollins that produce certain Queen hormones. The Drones searve the Queen in her court. The worker bees exist outside the hive and do all the grunt work. The King Bee is Jesus Christ, the Queen bee is the local pastor, the Drones are the Church elders and the workers are the laity.