Oatmeal Joey Arnold (@JoeyArnoldVN)

Sunday school was on 1 John 5. I made one comment. 1 Jn. 5:2 referenced John 14:23. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And we will see that. We can make friends with and network with and make our homes with like-minded soldiers of God. Salvation Army utilizes that terminology. To be like a team. Individualism versus collectivism. And collectivism can be seen in the sports world where people say we to refer to their sports team. It can be Borg mentality. Some of it can be good and some of that way and line of thinking can be bad or worse off. There is nuance in all of this. We can see the us thinking in history, in culture, in North Korea especially. I saw it in Vietnam. We saw it in families, tribes, neighborhoods, communities, clubs, religions, and the Olympics. We may see it less so in western worlds on average or in some ways. That is good and bad. Hard to summarize. But like tools, both collectivism and individualism has been utilized for evil. Both are good and bad. I don't mean Yin and Yang. I am not saying it is good to have good and bad. But life involves good and bad. The process of choosing good is what is good. We have freewill. We choose bad sometimes. We are bad times. We may be born bad. But we can be saved. We can be helped. We can change. I am reading a book mom got titled 52 Ways To Connect With Your Smart Phone Obsessed Kid by Jonathan McKee in 2016. Starvation in third world countries, especially in 2020, was caused by the United Nations and others. It is important to expose this. Matthew 3:17 talks about a voice from Heaven. I wonder how many times it might speak of voices coming from Heaven be it from God or whatever. I assume this came from God but I would study it. I know angels and demons spoke. But what about God speaking or voices speaking from the sky or was it in the head? Was it recorded in history books? Did the people there write about it? I compare 1 John 5:14 to a passage in Hebrew which talks about going boldly to the throne of grace. Understanding what is an idol and such is a good thing to study. Ted mentioned that. It reminded me of Exodus 20:4 which uses the word image to describe idolatry and everything. So within etymology, image is like the word photo and picture and everything. So, then I start think about art, television, movies, comics, cartoons, visual things, images, statues, things we see which we may worship or what have you. I am not going to say those things or certain things are bad or are always bad or have to be bad. There is nuance in what I am trying. I can say things can be bad or something. Linda Myers mentioned Keith Green or Greens who inspired teens and youth and people but especially teenagers towards oversea missions. Larry Mitchell said he met Keith. Perhaps they played together or something.