Marcus Aurelius: "You can also commit injustice by doing nothing"

"You can also commit injustice by doing nothing" - Marcus Aurelius.

"You can also commit injustice by doing nothing" - Marcus Aurelius.

An interesting chap. Few people may realize that he was an emperor of the Roman Empire. It came as a bit of a surprise to me not too long ago. I had always thought of him as just a philosopher.

I can almost hear him protest, "You call me a chap?" - but he was a good one. One of the few good emperors of that empire.

I stand to be corrected, but what we read today as his “works” were entries in his private journal, his personal diaries. They were never written for publication. (I read somewhere).

In a very real sense, therefore, he governed himself.

How do I say this without sounding dull? I will simply quote the Bible:

“He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty,

and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.”

That’s it.

He ruled his spirit.

Even as he ruled what was perhaps the mightiest empire on earth, he also ruled his own spirit.....

.....A kind of King David, if you will, certainly on a higher pedestal than Solomon. But I digress.

Indeed, you and I can also commit injustice by doing nothing.

We can commit injustice by saying nothing.

And in this age of instant publication (IP), we can also commit injustice by:

Writing nothing,

Recording nothing,

Posting nothing.

Where was I?

Ah yes.

I recall writing a week or two ago something to this effect:

There is no strong man coming

to pull a long, daisy-chained caravan of citizens

from where they are stuck

to where they want to go.

There is no tow rope

strong enough

to do that.

But if we all come

with our own ropes,

tether them to our little caravan,

and pull,

then the strong man’s rope,

pulling from the front,

may finally be enough.

So?

So, Stop committing injustice.

Get your hands dirty.

All hands must be on deck.

Otherwise, we merely perambulate.

Going round and round.

In circles.

I rest

Don Kenobi

#BigAgendaAfrica

#MarcusAurelius

#KingSolomon

Ps

Checked (just curious)

1.2 million posts hashtag #MarcusAurelius.

#KingSolomon, 63,000.

🤔

Is There Salvation Beyond the Church Walls?

Does God Save Only Christians?

Will non-Christians go to heaven? Acts 10 and Vatican II’s

Lumen Gentium reveal how God judges conscience, grace, and sincerity— not labels.

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Questions, Questions, Questions…

St. Peter declares:

“Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him.”
Acts 10:34–35

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Voices from the Church

Francis Arinze reflects:

“I think it was Pope Paul VI who said:
The Church looks on the face of every human being and sees Christ —
even when that person does not know Christ,
even when that person does not believe in Christ expressly.”
— Paul VI

He continues:

“Many people will be pleasantly surprised when they reach heaven, because they will realize they are saved by the grace of Christ — even if they did not know Christ expressly.
That is the kind of thing Cardinal Ratzinger was teaching.”

And finally, with characteristic clarity:

“If a person looks at the doctrine of Vatican II, paragraph sixteen of the document on the Church and salvation: for those who may not expressly know Christ, but who are seeking God with their whole heart and in all sincerity — only God will judge.
Not we.
We are not in God’s advisory council.”

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#OldManInTheMolue Reads the Text

I took a look at the doctrine of Vatican II mentioned by Cardinal Arinze, and this is what I found.

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Vatican II — Lumen Gentium, §16 (Excerpt)

Those also can attain to salvation
who through no fault of their own
do not know the Gospel of Christ
or His Church,
yet sincerely seek God
and, moved by grace,
strive by their deeds
to do His will
as it is known to them
through the dictates of conscience.

Nor does Divine Providence deny
the helps necessary for salvation
to those who, without blame on their part,
have not yet arrived
at an explicit knowledge of God,
but who strive to live a good life,
thanks to His grace.

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What the Council Is Saying (Plain English)

• Explicit knowledge of Christ is not the sole criterion for salvation.

• God judges sincerity of heart, conscience, and response to grace, not labels.

• Those who do not know Christ through no fault of their own, yet genuinely seek God and do what is right, are not excluded by God.

• Salvation is still through Christ’s grace, but not limited to conscious membership in the Church.

• Final judgment belongs to God alone — not the Church, not Christians, not theologians.

This is exactly why Cardinal Arinze’s line is so devastatingly simple:

“We are not in God’s advisory council.”

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Reflection

Me:

From the reading of St. Peter’s words in Acts 10:34–35, and listening to Francis Arinze, it became clear that I needed to rethink the long-held notion that only Christians will go to heaven.

In reflecting on this, I became familiar with the concept of “virtuous pagans”, which ultimately led me to pen the essay: The Forgotten Doctrine of Virtue.

I rest my case.

Don Kenobi

Started: 20/1/2023
Completed: 20/1/2026

#MyFrancisEssays | #OldManInTheMolue

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Watch the Full Interview

Click to watch: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SBFwiKF7G54&feature=shares

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Mammon, the False Christ: The Theology Behind the Deception

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Mammon, the False Christ: The Theology Behind the Deception

An unflinching theological analysis of Mammon as a false Christ, 

examining the prosperity gospel, false religion, and the conscious rejection of the Cross.

Core Argument: The prosperity gospel did not appear by accident. It was invented. To make exploitation feel Holy Spirit. To turn appetite into doctrine. So power could baptize itself and still speak the language of faith.

A false Christ was required. One who would never overturn tables. Who would Never bless the poor. Never warn that a man cannot serve both God and Mammon.

Who would smile at excess.

Sanctify inequality. 

And call gain “favor.”

This is the whole theology behind the deception behind the Prosperity Gospel

When faith becomes a marketplace, it no longer needs revelation, only justification.

That is why this was never confusion. Never about ignorance.

It was an invention - and that invention required a Jesus who would not interfere.

Mammon, the False Christ: The Theology Behind the Deception 

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When Christianity Stops Resisting the Flesh

Without the prosperity gospel, Christianity would have stood as a bulwark against every work of the flesh. Instead, it now embraces those works, hoists them on a flag, and mocks virtue, rebranding virtuousness itself as “virtue-signaling.”

A little about The forgotten doctrine of virtue here: https://donkenobi.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-forgotten-doctrine-of-virtue-video.html

What we are witnessing today is not confusion.
It is not naïveté.
And it is no longer deception.

At this stage in the evolution of this catastrophe, this false Christianity, it is rejection.
A conscious rejection of Jesus.

You have looked at the Cross and said in your heart,
“God forbid.”

These things are hard to write.
But writing them is the cross I bear.

When I am done, dead and buried, these words may be read centuries from now, not because they are profound, but because in a culture of lies, telling the truth is revolutionary.

It is like the one man in a Nazi crowd who refused to raise his arm.
The solitary figure who did not join a ridiculous salute to a ridiculous ideology, preached by ridiculous men, many of whom would later poison themselves and their children to escape the consequences of their crimes.

If you are still deceived at this stage, understand this clearly.
This is no longer deception.
It is rejection.

Rejection of Christ’s yoke.
Rejection of the Holy Spirit.
Rejection of truth.
Every truth He spoke.
Every parable He taught.
The Sermon on the Mount.

And all this because you prefer Mammon.

So let me ask the uncomfortable question.

If you reject Christ and reject the Holy Spirit, can you still claim to love God?

Or do you, in truth, hate Him?

Everything you now do, even invoking His name, even driving out demons, even performing many miracles, you do not because God approves of you, but because of suffering humanity.

And God, in His mercy, is always on the side of the suffering.

He will not abandon the afflicted because of you.

Think of it this way.
A wicked farmer grafts a diseased branch onto a healthy tree.
Would the Lord reject that branch because of the farmer’s sins?

No.

The grafted branch now has a new lease on life and no excuse left not to bear fruit.

Do you see it?

Fruit-bearing is why the Lord honours His own name, not yours, when it is invoked to loosen the chains of the suffering.

If this were not so, why would He say on the last day,

“Depart from me, you workers of iniquity.”

And why would they reply,

“But we dined with you.
We drove out demons.
We performed many, many miracles in your name.”

I will say it again, and I will not soften it.

If you are still deceived at this stage, it is no longer deception.
It is rejection.
Conscious rejection of Jesus.

And for this reason, yes, this reason,

“God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie.”
https://biblehub.com/2_thessalonians/2-11.htm

God walks away.
He abandons you.

I have written about this before.
I called it “Judgment by Abandonment.”
Search for it.
This hashtag may help.
#MyFrancisEssays

There is a straight line from false Christianity to nearly every great evil of the last five hundred years.

A false Christ was required.
One upon whom the iniquities of history could be projected and baptized as divine will.

“My yoke is easy,” Christ says,
because I have placed it on the necks of…

Now you see why the lie of the Curse of Ham must stand taller than any colossus.
It is the bedrock of that faith.
The faith of the false Jesus.

Lest I digress further, these things are burdensome to write, let me say only this.

Christianity and Islam agree on one thing.
Jesus will return.

They agree on a second.
He will return to destroy false religion.

I rest my case.

Don Kenobi
#MyFrancisEssays
#OldManInTheMolue

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The Prodigal Son Meets The Good Samaritan

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Mercy Always Runs Faster Than Judgment

#FaithAndMercy | #MolueMonologue | #OldManInTheMolue

By Don Kenobi

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Mercy Always Runs Faster Than Judgment

Does the Lord God hate LGBTQ people?

Does He not love them—those first made in His image? Does divine love somehow curdle into hatred because some asked for their inheritance early and went out into the world to live licentiously?

Does the love of a father—of a good father—turn to hatred because of a child’s choices?

Good fathers are patient. And good sons and daughters, raised by good fathers, though they may not initially understand that patience, often come to recognize it in time. They remember the words spoken in love, the mercy offered without explanation, the inexplicable affection that remained even when they wandered far from home—whether that wandering child was a son, a daughter, or a soul that refuses simple categories.

Anyone who still reads their Bible will recognize the pattern being invoked here. This is the parable of the prodigal son—so often thrown like a weapon, rather than received as a mirror.

A Necessary Digression: Why the Prodigal Son, Not the Daughter?

It is worth pausing to ask why our Lord chose a son for this parable, and not a daughter. A daughter who went away to live licentiously in first-century patriarchal Israel would have had no clear path back. She would not have been met with feasting and song. She would have been deemed dishonoured—perhaps even marked for death. Only men were afforded the cultural luxury of failure followed by redemption.

I am not certain this digression is strictly necessary, but I am a bondsman to the pen, and this is the work it requires of me.

Back to the Son

Now imagine the prodigal still on his wayward path, still flush with enough money to live as he pleased. Suppose he came to harm at the hands of another—seriously injured, perhaps even killed—and the news reached his father.

What do you think that father’s response would have been?

Here, the earlier digression begins to illuminate the story. In the imagined case of a prodigal daughter, the father might have been bound by the customs of his time. He might have sent men to erase her from memory. But in the case of a son, he would have sent men to avenge him. They would bring his body home for burial. He would be mourned. He would be honoured.

(As for the daughter’s body—please, do not ask.)

Now imagine again: the son, reduced to feeding from a swine trough, broken and hungry, killed by cruel hands. If the father had sent ten soldiers the first time, in his wrath he would now send a hundred.

Why?

Because to kill a man already crushed by life would be, in his eyes, an unforgivable act—one that cried out for retribution. The father would hate those who harmed his son, even though the son had willingly left the household.

The sin of the son, after all, was against the father alone—against his dignity, his comfort, his security—and against himself. It harmed no one else. But those who raised a hand against him would face the full weight of the father’s wrath.

The Samaritan Re-Imagined

Now imagine the parable of the Good Samaritan differently.

Suppose the man beaten and left for dead on the roadside was none other than the prodigal son himself, on his way home after wasting everything. The priest passes by. The Levite passes by. But the Samaritan stops.

You know who the Samaritans were—those not carried off to Babylon, those who intermarried, those despised by the returnees. Outsiders. Compromised. Unclean.

The Samaritan tends the wounded man, takes him to an inn, and pays for his care. The next day the prodigal awakens and tells the Samaritan his name, and where he is going—to his father’s house.

Now imagine the father seeing his son from afar, running toward him, robe flapping, dignity forgotten. Imagine the tears, the joy, the feast prepared in haste. And then imagine the moment the father learns who brought his son home.

A Samaritan.

Can you picture the father’s gratitude? His reverence? His love for the stranger who showed mercy when others would not?

Mercy Always Runs Faster Than Judgment

This leaves each of us with a question we must answer honestly for ourselves.

How many prodigal sons and daughters are scattered across the world, hungry not for approval but for grace? How many have you helped bring home?

How many fathers, bent with grief over their wayward children, have you sent running down the valley in joy—robes flapping, dignity forgotten, tears streaming as they rush to embrace a returning son or daughter?

That is the measure.

I rest my case.

Don Kenobi

#MyFrancisEssays
#OldManInTheMolue
#MercyNotJudgment
#MercyAlwaysRunsFasterThanJudgment
#MercyOrJudgment
#TheProdigalSonMeetsTheGoodSamaritan

When God Steps Back: Judgment by Abandonment Explained

When God Steps Back: Judgment by Abandonment Explained

This homily explores 2 Thessalonians 2:11 and a sobering biblical pattern - one rooted in difficult Scripture that is often misunderstood, ignored, or deliberately softened.

Core Ideas

1. Divine Judgment Through Abandonment

The homily teaches that God sometimes judges not by intervening, but by allowing people to follow the very evil they insist on choosing.

This is not because God delights in judgment, but because persistent rejection of truth eventually leads to God stepping back, permitting people to face the full consequences of their own choices.

Divine restraint, once refused long enough, is withdrawn.

2. False Anointing & Strong Delusion

The argument draws directly from 2 Thessalonians 2:11–12, where Scripture states that God:

“sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false.”

This is presented not as confusion, but as judicial action; a form of judgment against sustained unbelief and spiritual stubbornness.

The strong delusion is not random.

It is the consequence of repeatedly choosing error over truth. 

What Scripture describes as God giving people what they want:

not truth, but lies.

3. Divine Patience Is Not Approval

A crucial distinction is made between God’s patience and God’s approval.

1. Silence does not mean blessing
2. Delay does not mean consent
3. Mercy does not equal endorsement

The absence of immediate judgment must never be mistaken for divine acceptance.

4. Moral Collapse & the Danger of Self-Justification

The homily applies this biblical pattern to modern spiritual movements that blend worldly ideologies with Christian language.

False confidence, theological arrogance, and moral compromise may feel like conviction—but can instead be signs of spiritual abandonment, not genuine faith.

5. Apostasy Masquerading as Faith

One of the gravest warnings in the homily is this:

People can fall away from true faith while believing they are still loyal to God.

This is apostasy that feels righteous—

self-deception dressed as devotion.

A Closing Prayer

If these words help even one person turn away from the crowded road and return to the hard, luminous, and liberating way of our Lord Jesus Christ, then I give thanks to You, O Lord my God, and thank You for the privilege of bearing them.

Read the Full Essay

👉 Judgment by Abandonment: A Homily for Troubled Times

https://donkenobi.blogspot.com/2025/06/judgment-by-abandonment-homily-for.html

Audio script (for monologue based on homily)

When Warnings Are Called Shrill

Funny how warnings sound shrill

right up until they start coming true.

For years, concerns were dismissed—

not for lack of evidence,

but for the discomfort they caused.

We reward calm reassurance

and punish inconvenient foresight.

Until delay turns into damage.

Dismissed does not mean disproven.

And when reality finally arrives—

when it can no longer be denied—

the warnings are quietly rebranded as “obvious.”

No apologies.

No accountability.

Just collective amnesia.

Amnesia is a comforting sin.

This was never about being right.

It was about listening

before the cost became irreversible.

(A breath.)

A Wicked World

What a wicked world.

Priests.

Pastors.

And sheeple.

Sadly—

very sadly—

religion does not immunize evil.

(Cups his right ear.)

Sheeple? Sheeple?

Ah yes—sheeple.

One of those words people—

sorry, sheeple—

like to throw around.

Funny thing is,

sit in the Molue long enough

and you’ll discover this:

the ones who use it most

are usually projecting

exactly what they are—

unknowingly.

(Kicks his shoe at an imaginary object.

Pulls up his sleeves.

Does a brief Michael Jackson pirouette.)

Sorry about that…

But tell me—

tell me—

How do people with eyes,

ears,

and a reasoning faculty

fail to see what is clear as day?

They have eyes.

They can see.

But they do not discern.

Judgment by Abandonment

(Cups his ears and shouts.)

Judgment by Abandonment!

Abandonment!!

Get it?

Good.

You’ll find it in 2 Thessalonians 2:11.

Yes—that old, uncomfortable verse.

But it is Scripture only doing

what Scripture has always done:

Explaining reality

(After we have exhausted our excuses).

(Cups his mouth and yells.)

Who has a Bible?

Read on:

https://donkenobi.blogspot.com/2025/06/judgment-by-abandonment-homily-for.html

Judgement By Abandonment: A Homiletic Monologue

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Judgment by Abandonment

When God Steps Back

A Homiletic Monologue: The most terrifying judgment in Scripture may not be punishment, but permission..... 

From Saul to Second Thessalonians, Scripture reveals a sobering pattern: when truth is persistently rejected, God may give people exactly what they demand, allowing them to embrace the very delusions they have chosen over the truth.

The Myth of Loud Judgment

Funny how we talk about judgment as though it only arrives with thunder. Fire from heaven. A shout.

A visible hand forcing evil back into line.

But Scripture tells a quieter, more frightening story.

There comes a moment when God does not strike.
Does not intervene.
Does not correct.

He steps back.

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Judgment by Abandonment

Paul names it plainly in Second Thessalonians, chapter two, verse eleven:

“For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion, so that they may believe the lie.”

Not because God delights in deception.
Not because He approves of evil.
But because truth has been refused for too long.

This is judgment by abandonment.

A sobering pattern runs through Scripture, uncomfortable, often misunderstood, and frequently softened to spare modern ears.

When people repeatedly reject truth, God eventually honors their choice.
He gives them what they insist on having.

He permits what He once restrained.
He allows what He once warned against.

Not because He approves,
but because truth was rejected long enough to make restraint meaningless.

This is not God changing.
It is humanity insisting.

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When God Gives What We Demand

Israel demanded a king.
God warned them.
They insisted.
And though the Lord was grieved, He gave them Saul.

How did that work out?

Pharaoh hardened his heart.
Then Scripture says God confirmed that hardness.

This is the pattern.

Not to chaos.
Not to chance.
But to themselves.

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“God Gave Them Over”

Paul tells us, three times, in Romans chapter one:

“Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts.”
“For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions.”
“Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to a debased mind.”

This is where many stumble.

They mistake God’s silence for blessing.
They confuse patience with approval.

But patience is not consent.
God’s silence is not endorsement.

There is a terrifying mercy in being allowed to continue unchecked,
preaching lies,
celebrating falsehood,
blessing what God has warned against,
while heaven remains quiet.

That quiet is not absence.
It is restraint withdrawn.

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The Nature of Strong Delusion

A strong delusion does not fall on the innocent.

It settles on those who refused to love the truth.

Not those who never heard it,
but those who heard it,
understood it,
and turned away.

And once truth is rejected long enough, lies stop feeling like lies.

They feel righteous.
They feel anointed.
They feel obvious.

This is why falsehood so often arrives dressed in confidence.
Why deception rarely looks like darkness.
Why it feels persuasive.
Why it feels safe.

Judgment by abandonment does not look like chains.
It looks like freedom.

Freedom without truth.
Freedom without light.
Freedom without God.

And by the time the consequences arrive,
the delusion has already done its work.

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A Mirror, Not a Weapon

This homily is not aimed at “those people.”

It is a mirror held up to all of us.

Because the most dangerous prayer God can answer
is not,
“Lord, strike this down.”

But,
“Lord, leave me alone.”

And sometimes,
after every warning has been ignored,
He does.

He steps back.

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Permission Is Not Anointing

Let us be absolutely clear.

God may permit a wicked man or a wicked system.
He may even use it.

But to call such a thing anointed is not error.

It is heresy.

Biblically speaking, anointing is consecration,
set apart for divine service.

If the purpose is evil,
God does not bless it.

He may permit it.
He may use it.
But He does not anoint it.

That is the logic of abandonment.

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The Holy Spirit Is Sovereign (The Illusion of Certainty)

There exists a class of theologians
who cannot speak two sentences
without invoking Aquinas,
who act as though they are vying for a vacancy
in the office of memo writer for God.

Yet Scripture makes clear
that no one fully understands the Holy Spirit,
or knows where He comes from
or where He is going.

Still, they speak with unseemly certainty.

They defend the indefensible
as though Scripture were merely advisory,
binding on everyone else,
but optional for them.

Have they never read Aquinas himself,
the very one they invoke endlessly?

He wrote:

“He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral.”

And again:

“Anger looks to the good of justice; and if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.”

Yet still they speak with unseemly certainty.

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Lighthouses, Not Arsonists

And not only do they defend the indefensible,
they speak confidently of dismantling works of mercy,
of shutting down works of love,
of tearing down beacons placed by Scripture
along the narrow way,
intended to guide the lost back to shore.

They speak as though Scripture may be revised,
as though condemning the twice, nay thrice, condemned
were of greater importance
than pulling souls from the quagmire of sin
that holds them fast.

They fail to understand this.

The priest can only be a lighthouse,
or a builder of lighthouses.

Never a destroyer of beacons.

The shoreline of heaven is long.
There is room enough for every show ship
and every rust bucket
that has heaven in its sights.

And the priest must be a lighthouse
for every single one of them.

We do not bury grace
because we fear it lets its recipients off too lightly.

The Holy Spirit is sovereign.

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The Wind Still Blows

“The wind blows wherever it pleases.
You hear its sound,
but you cannot tell where it comes from
or where it is going.”

So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

The work of the Holy Spirit is invisible, like the wind.
Unpredictable, like the wind.
Yet unmistakable by its effects.

And those effects on sinners are clear.

The Spirit awakens conscience.
Breaks pride.
Restrains evil.
Reveals truth.
Creates new birth.

And when resisted long enough,
withdraws restraint.

The Spirit is sovereign.
He is not governed by memos written by priests, prelates, or pastors
who fancy themselves God’s administrators.

Remember Moses on Mount Sinai.

“What is your name, Lord?”

And God replied,
“I AM THAT I AM.”

I am who I am.
I will be who I will be.
I do what I do.
I bless whom I bless.

And,
I withdraw when I withdraw.

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Final Clarity

Brothers and sisters, let us be serious.

If you can fully grasp a spirit’s origin
and control its direction,
it is not the Holy Spirit.

For years, the line between good and evil
has been deliberately blurred by false doctrines.

But Scripture speaks with brutal clarity:

“A senseless man does not know,
and a fool does not understand,
that though the wicked sprout like grass
and all evildoers flourish,
they will be destroyed forever.”
Psalm 92:6–7

The prosperity gospel,
one of the most pervasive of these doctrines,
teaches that prosperity is proof of righteousness.

In doing so, it reveals itself for what it truly is.

A deadly lie.

Which is why we are where we are today.

What more can be said?

Nothing.

Nothing at all

Don Kenobi

#MyFrancisEssays #OldManInTheMolue