Manns Medium

Americans pride themselves on comparison of their intelligence level and many even join special societies to promote just how intelligent they are.  Others use grades from academic institutions to measure their level of intelligence and still others use their knowledge of how certain things work or how well they perform their chosen tasks as proof of their superiority over another.  All this and yet still we prove each and every day just how unintelligent we are and how insane our motives to prove one better than the other really is. We have all heard the old saying that the true sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, the exact same way but expecting a different result.  This act alone shows us for what we really are.  A bunch of insane fools who keep searching for that elusive longing in the exact same area we have been searching for it for decades now and still not finding it.  We keep looking for that answer to the same question bu...

For years I have struggled with this question and was never able to even provide a decent answer to those who would ask.  I never was sure why evil exist and I would simply say that possibly it was because of the “yin and yang” theory.  For those of you who may not be familiar with this theory, it is the theory of in order to know well, you need to know badly and opposite things must exist to help us better understand the difference between them.  That was then but today, I have a much different theory and one that I believe matches better than the previous theory. The reason this question was so very hard for me to answer was because as you read Genesis of the Old Testament, you see God creating the worlds and everything in it.  You hear how happy he was and you read that it was good.  Also in the Old Testament, you hear the multiple of stories depicting God’s love, compassion and caring ways so it makes sense to ask the question, if God truly so loved the...

In a nation claiming to be so Christian, we surely ignore the most glaring thing of all.  If you are truly a child of God then you were made in his image.  His image is a spirit; a spirit has no skin color so why does this one fact escape us all?  It does so because that’s the way evil wants it and as long as we are willing to be led by the nose by evil, then that is the only way we will see it.  The differences in skin tone are due to pigmentation, pigmentation necessary to protect your body from external factors period.  What defines you is not the outside or anything else evil wishes you to believe.  What defines you is how you conduct yourself day by day as a child of God but before you make any attempt to feed the hungry and house the homeless, you need to perform one very important act first. The first thing you must do to become a much better you and pleasing to the God you claim to serve is remove that beam from your eye first.  In other w...

Yesterday, the wife and I were talking about the shootings in Dallas and she said something that got me to thinking and something that had never occurred to me.  She mentioned how our generation and the generation before us used to exercise the art of peacemaking.  She remarked that those of us who sought peace first would always be the first responders to any crisis and begin immediately to look for a peaceful solution to the issue.  We never waited until it was too far gone and we never stopped to pose for a picture or camera while doing it.  She mentioned how we would always try to find the common ground before racing toward the high ground.  She then said something that made me sit up in my chair; she asked if possibly our generation and those before who sought peace first was a dying breed. I got to thinking more and more about what she asked and this morning came to a conclusion.  Many of us who had and have children wanted to raise them to quest...

When Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa back in 1503-1504, he probably had no earthy idea that he would be viewed as one of the best of many eras or that his painting would result in becoming "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world". Had he known, he would have probably made other choices than the ones he made once his finished project was done and was exposed to the public. This is the same exact road we continue to travel today.  No one knows the results of an experiment or an action when it first begins.  They know what results that they would like or what results that they were after but no one can say exactly what the end result will be.  Because of this, we often look back at the place where it began and then attempt to correct any incorrect turns or wrong directions we took but to no avail.  We then become frustrated and later many just plainly give up and give ...

For those Marines who survived this “supposedly hazing, assaults and physical abuse” when it was thought to be the best way to train and condition Marines so that they would be better able to survive wars and what they saw in them as well as survive longer in a prisoner of war (POW) camp than those not exposed to this type of training, we say now how much of a wimp those who now cry when their little bitty feelings get hurt are draining this nation of macho men with balls.  We now use this as the reason so many are committing suicide and begging to get out once they get in or refusing to even joins in the first place.  We do this because we survived it and if we can survive it, then those in the news crying like a little bitty baby should be able to survive it as well but what we miss is that not everyone is like us and to hold ourselves as perfect examples of how others should act is definitely a clear definition of arrogance.  So are we now to display Marines as arroga...

Many those of the Christian circles and some even with very little belief in God may say that God never makes mistakes and while I used to think that was true; I have discovered that he did.  The only issue with that is God was powerful enough, wise enough and loving enough to correct that mistake.  This is something we have yet to have full faith in saying about man. In the beginning, God demanded full obedience and was not afraid to wipe the slate clean and start over if those he created forgot to be thankful to him who created them.  We see the evidence in the story of Noah and of course the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Walls of Jericho.  This was also evident by the Commandments Moses envisioned God wanted him to deliver to all his children and thus began the “fire and brimstone” preaching that so many stories have been written about.  It was only after destroying these places and losing so many good souls caught up in the sinfulness others tha...