In this post, part of a series) I share the process of admitting fault and speaking up about evil. Generally people do neither and the result is that evil perpetuates. I use examples from around me currently where I have taken an unpopular position but eventually this has good/godly ramifications. Enjoy.
I sued the SPCA recently and have just shared a public warning about the poor ethics and management of the local branch. It has caused no end of grief within the community and as knowledge gets out that one man had the b*lls to speak it like it is, the consequences will be long-lasting.
The local rag placed a news article supplied from a source with a vested interest on their front page recently. I wrote the Editor and the letter was suppressed. It’s not the first time that controversial matters have been suppressed by the owner, known around town to be ‘rather politically partial’. I find it humourous that he used the space for a political ‘puff piece’ [aka BS] for a local politician instead!
I found out that one of my neighbours had gossiped to another new neighbour about me. Eventually finding the truth, I formalised my concerns, inviting the perpetrator of this evil to sit down and discuss the matter. This caused consternation from the recipient of the gossip when he realised what I was going to do. I did and got the usual BS from the neighbour I accused as a result.
I could go on, but the essence of this post is that godliness does not come by fear, politics and silence. That’s putting it in the negative. The positive version is that godliness requires confrontation. The Master set this example, showing more than utter fearlessness, He actually went out of His way to ferret out evil and expose it. He called it like it was.
For those who doubt my words here, think of a situation where things are normal but one person is hurting another. Perhaps this may be the worship of democracy, the participation in interest-bearing practices; enslavement by way of gambling or even employment or social ostracism by way of racial, intellectual or other bullying. Can you imagine Jesus not speaking up about this? If He defined adultery as a heart attitude; and condemned those who could help but didn’t and walked on by the hurting, and to the point that He was prepared to give His life to complete His mission, do you not think that He requires us to speak up about things when they go awry?
Now before I get into these three examples above then and extract lessons of wisdom from them all, please understand that I DO NOT claim to be perfect. I have an ego, yes, but I work hard to speak it like it is. In the vernacular this is called shooting straight. As I explain in the third example I give here, logic applied to fact brings truth. Ad hominem attacks are false logic.
1. Significance of Suing the SPCA
Debbie Daldy has a position of responsibility in the King Country region. I have shared her various misconduct in previous posts but the significance of this exposure could have serious ramifications. What say after years of mismanagement and incompetence somebody goes public with her conduct? What say as a result of this somebody else says, “Me too!”? What say somebody at SPCA actually cares about their reputation and arranges for her to step aside and someone with basic integrity takes over? What say that the reputation of the SPCA locally changes from a poor one of users of people to people who actually care?
The alternative is that the community is affected negatively so that newcomers to town have to learn about the local SPCA the hard way – the name of the organisation keeps getting a bad rap and . . .
2. The Local Rag
The Taumarunui Bulletin is the Local Rag run by Mark Ebrey. It’s been a declining business for years and is now down to only a few pages, mainly consisting of Real Estate adverts. Harcourts, you really should be able to buy Mark out for a song now methinks! Anyway the paper ran a front page story from a vested interest starting with, “COVID-19 vaccinations continue to be rolled out in our community.”
Anyone astute enough to decipher reality in a sea of political spin will know that there are a myriad of problems with the various COVID-19 vaccinations – they are not vaccinations and are uncertified; they are ‘dangerous’ as there has been widespread medical adversity with all variants of the so-called ‘solution’; internationally their rollout is not as widespread as claimed by the authorities; in fact the entire COVID-19 thing (Pandemic, Lockdowns & Testing) is a sham and has been fraught with falsehood, misinformation and deception from the outset.
My letter to the editor was bumped. This is not the first time, so here it is, for the record. Mark, hope like h*ll that your partisan approach to refusing an alternative message cannot be linked to any vaccine-related injury or death, otherwise your decision to silence opposition could cause you litigation!
| from: | Dennis A Smith <victusinambitus@gmail.com> |
| reply-to: | dennis@dennis.nz |
| to: | Mark Ebrey <ebreym@xxxx.co.nz> |
| date: | 21 May 2021, 16:07 |
| subject: | Letter to the Editor |
| mailed-by: | gmail.com |
Hi Mark
A letter to the Editor, please:Sir; I note how the lead article of your recent newspaper congratulates the King Country for its timely implementation of the COVID-19 vaccine. In this regard I note that the vast majority of the King Country population is of an age or inclination to avoid questioning authority & properly researching any ‘problematic’ Internet-based conspiracy.
As a … Private Investigator; having blogged 2.5m words and written three dozen books it never ceases to amaze me at the power the media has to encourage group-think and in preventing, independent thought & self-awareness. Fortunately though there are enough awake & aware in this region to understand the agendas of the ‘Ministry of Truth’; depopulation & NWO agendas; the use of these vaccines as a method of spreading of Spike proteins; how the global reduction of season flu numbers in 2020 equates very closely to the incidence of COVID-19, and much more.
We do not all blindly trust Cindy’s medicine; believing that historically governments have always looked after “We the people”, particularly using complicit media as a tool for dispersing wisdom & truth (found by the clinical application of cold logic into facts).
Despite the potential of further personal social ostracism, like with the lockdowns, masks & horrendous public debt, I call, “BS!” Until the recent COVID-19 vaccines are proven safe, my gate is now locked, with a ban applying to all who may shed medical trauma to innocent victims within. As President Trump says, “Good luck!” to the others. Along with their ‘Darwin Award’, they may be needing it.
Dennis A. Smith
Matapuna
END
It is possible that Mark didn’t like the style of the letter. The possibility that he ran out of space and could not fit this letter in exists and that he may slip it in the next issue but in such a case he could easily have slipped it onto his Facebook page. This is not a matter of whether Cindy or Nisi is right. It is that the importance of getting an alternative message out there is huge. Newspaper men who rely on the income from businessmen and politicians have never and should never be the determiner of medical truth to the masses. As I say in the letter, thank God that “We do not all blindly trust Cindy’s medicine”.
I note also that Weston Kirton’s puff-piece identifies that the local iwi supported him willingly. If so, then this is interesting change, because I was informed personally by the RDC’s CEO, Clive Manley, that two years ago he was firmly told to “shove it” when he sought their approval to fix the pothole because they didn’t want people going down there – apparently this was a then dead kaumatua’s wishes. Funny how things change given time, and a different story-teller eh?
3. Neighbourly Gossip
A new neighbour came into our street and (as you do) met and discussed me with another neighbour. I have a large property that backs onto more than half a dozen residential properties and a couple of commercial properties. As far as I can determine, some words were spoken which weren’t very complimentary of me – “He’s trouble! He ripped [an old man] off! He’s pissed a lot of people off around town. Be careful and protect yourself!” Sort of thing.
The recipient of this gossip was careful not to dob his neighbour in (he didn’t want to get offside with the man of gossip) but over some days I worked it all out. I guess I must have some investigative skills left, even at this stage of life! So I thought to myself that I’d just leave it all and let sleeping dogs lie. Then a strange thing happened. I was working away painting or concreting and a thought came to me about defamation. WTF! Where did that thought come from? So I prayed about it and asked the Lord whether or not this thought was a prompting from Him or whether it was just me thinking something.
Well usually I will have an answer to this kind of prayer by a gentle nudge yes, or no (“You’re doing fine, Nisi, back yourself!” or “Be careful now son, don’t get ahead of yourself!” sort of thing). This time however I was caught out with the urgency and importance of doing something about it all in His eyes.
So I slipped the guy a letter telling him that I was “wronged” by what he did and asking him to meet with me and to talk about it. If you’re interested the letter is here, but essentially I explained that I had determined that he had spoken ill of me behind my back (gossip) and that there were falsehoods shared. This exposed him to claims of defamation but that I wanted to avoid that and to deal with the trouble man-to-man as per the scriptural advice. I also explained that it was likely that I would share these events publicly which is my norm.
…My understanding, extracted (as I have previously hinted at to you in person) from [other neighbour] over a period of days was that your conversation when he first arrived in Taumarunui is that you said four things:
- That I was “trouble”;
- That I had caused Ron Cooke problems;
- That I had pissed a lot of people off around town; and
- That in your opinion I was best to be avoided, for reasons of self-preservation.
You can enhance or correct the details of what you actually said any time. The third and fourth points do not concern me, the third is true and the fourth is simply your advice which you are welcome to share as widely as you so wish. The first and second concepts however are based on incomplete and/or incorrect information and are therefore false. Apart from the lacking of wisdom in participating in gossip when you could have established the truth or otherwise of these claims by talking with me, the sharing of these falsehoods is slander; i.e. defamation.
You have wronged me.
I have never done anything to harm you, nor hurt you, indeed the opposite is true because for years …
This is pretty direct talking but all true. Most would not dare go there, I did and will. I would note however is that my acknowledgement that I have pissed off a lot of people around town is ONLY crooks, crims & crazies; AND those who believe gossip. I call myself a “professional arsehole” because I never give up. Please don’t leave off the “professional” part, nor why I call myself this.
So we met and talked and this is a summary of the meeting:
He started by saying that he was disappointed to receive the letter explaining that, “We hardly know each other” which was essentially a defensive measure attempting to put me down and put the blame back onto me. It failed, as I countered with an explanation of why I wrote the letter to him the first thing the very next morning, because “it appeared to be important to the Lord”. It appeared to me that this explanation was sufficient to quell any of his concerns as to why we were meeting and talking about it.
Knowing that we were both believers, he then tried to use the preaching approach, “Luke 17 says that we should forgive . . .” blah, blah, blah. I refused to engage over his biblical instruction, instead repeating the same story that the reason I was confronting him related to what I believed to be God’s direct instruction to me to press the issue and that I wasn’t interested in personal stuff. It was not a forgiveness issue, certainly not on my part. This did two things. It a) moved the focus from a theoretical situation (his, “but you gotta forgive” advice) into a real situation (“hang on a minute bro, I’m talking about what you actually said”) and b) when I refused to submit to his preaching the preacher was refused authority to preach – the preacher was depowered.
“But the other guy is not a Christian!” he says. “Do you really believe what he says?” he asked of me. “Over my word” his implication. “Sir!” I replied, “Sadly, in my life I have found that it is Christians who lie and deceive more than those outside of the church”.
So he denied that he had said what I knew that he had said. He lied to me. He justified what he may have said because many people had told him this or that. No, he could not remember who told him what! Spare me days! However he justified his conduct didn’t bother me – he could tell me that a gazillion anonymous people had all told him the same thing for all he wanted. The point was that he denied what I knew that he had actually said. Christians are, sadly, the worst – again!
Then out came the accusations against the recipient of the gossip. “We’re Christians, he’s not. He this! He that! Brother, you can trust me, not him,” and so on. My response? “No, sir! I am a professional. I establish my own reality. The man you have just falsely accused of lying to me did nothing wrong. Sure, he can be a hothead. Sure he may lack a little maturity. Sure he [whatever] but I found out what you said by using my investigative skills and it is my opinion that you said a, b, c & d.”
“So now if you wish to put your response to my formal letter in writing [in kind] . . . “
“Oh no! Nothing in writing!” he said.
Hmm . . . “OK! Well that forces me into a position that the three of us will have to meet and get to the bottom of who said what and when about me. Let’s arrange that as the next step . . .”
No! He didn’t want that, because [wait for it, listen very hard now . . . ] “I might have said that you ripped off the old man!”
Ah! Now, the truth . . . an admission. It took an hour or more. It would never have naturally happened if we had all wanted to keep the peace but now we ALL know that one of my neighbours shared gossip that was based on a falsehood to another neighbour. In common parlance this is called slander. In the legal system this conduct is called defamation. In the natural justice world it is wrong. In the spiritual realm it is called evil.
I then showed and explained to my neighbour the evidence – three books that detailed the proof of a conspiracy that I had uncovered. I shared more about how the opposite of his claims that I had ripped off the ‘old man’ was indeed the case, that I had gone the extra mile for the ‘old man’ rather than ripping him off as he had falsely claimed in his gossip session. I gave him one of the books and he left.
If you ever read this post Laurie, there is only one word you should be uttering to me ever again and it is, “Sorry!”
Concluding advice
Sometimes, even years after a confrontation, I will have someone contact me and recount an experience that they had with me. It usually revolves around the God/faith thing but not always. People can recount the encounter, sometimes even word for word, and they often talk of their feelings at the time – shock or some deep or meaningful impact that they will never forget.
Samoans in particular encourage me to never stop speaking up. They will often say, “You give us hope!” meaning that they feel oppressed at home with a bully of a crooked Prime Minister lording it over them. Some astute and treasured leaders in the ex-pat community call me “a national treasure”. Others will recount of the shock of being told to stand up and be a man; return to their estranged wife and apologise. Some may say that their experiences being “led to Christ” were life-changing and that they have never been the same since. People report real spiritual experiences as they deal with the issues I raise constructively.
I have learned that it always pays to shoot straight and that the value to humanity, God and myself is infinitely more valuable when we stand up fearlessly and call a spade a spade.
There are essentially two ways to deal with evil (often called “sin” by Christians) a) to work with a correct challenge constructively or b) to deal with it through denial and/or defense. Deception is always employed in the latter approach. The former necessitates openness and honesty.
The latter eventually results in shame and eventually death. The former eventually results in honour and life. I choose the former. I trust that you will too.
Leave a Reply