Ulterior Motives

October 3, 2025

We still live in a free country, but for how much longer, one can never be sure. The thought police are trying awfully hard to play with our minds to catch our loyal and unquestioning devotion…

However, facts still do matter, but unfortunately, to fewer and fewer people.

Innuendo and insinuation, scuttlebutt, gossip, and rumors disguised as fact are fast replacing truth and reality.

It seems we are relying on people we don’t know and who are now even being replaced by AI generated not-people, and that, those not-people becoming friend and companion, replacing real live humans — like my stuffed animal I hugged onto so tightly as a child.

Have we really become that desperate?

That stuffed animal I clung onto when I was little, I let go of. I gave that comforting toy up a long, long time ago, replacing it with growing up. Shouldn’t that be the way we should go?

When I was a child, I was speaking like a child, I was thinking like a child, I was reasoning like a child; when I became a man, I did away with the things of the child. — 1 Corinthians 13:11, Berean Literal Bible (BLB).

“The Bible?!?” you ask in stunned amazement…

“Yes.” I answer. “The Bible… I use the Bible.” I’m a 75 year old fuddyduddy who relies on the truths, the practicality, and the verity of the Bible — and have for over 50 years now.

There are many verses in the Bible which give sound advice that come alive in the realm of reality, and I advise that you read it.

Yet, throughout human history people have attacked, minimized, and dismissed God, the Scriptures, and more recently, for the last 2,000 years, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Like, they have something better?!?

It amazes me that there are so many thought police trying to capture us and at least trying to persuade us and take us into their anti-Christian, anti-Bible, and anti-God world. On top of that, there are a lot of phony-baloneys going around, masquerading as true Christian Evangelists, pretending to carry the very messages of God…

What amazes me is that so many of us swallow their rotten fish stories.

What their motives are is not understandable to me and at a minimum, make no sense to me whatsoever. On the other hand, true Christians, it is clear to me, have no ulterior motives. On the contrary, I have discovered all three — God, Jesus, and the Bible — to provide a “meat and potatoes,” functioning, and a workable way of growing up, and that growing up into what the Bible refers to as the Way (not a way), the Truth (not my truth), and the Life (not what I imagined) is what motivates Bible Believing Born Again Christians..

As for me, I stopped casting about, fishing around for something fulfilling, something I could put on my table that would fill me up and satisfy my yearnings for a rich and satisfying life.

Look. Jesus first called fishermen, and they immediately followed Him. Why? Because He filled their nets when they had fished all night but had nothing to show for their labors. Their nets had come up empty, but Jesus fully provided.

Like those men who chose to follow Jesus, I no longer am casting about, coming up empty, nor dropping a line and a lure, hoping I will catch something… anything that would fill my needs.

I turned my life over to Jesus, and He filled me up and satisfied all my yearnings for a rich and satisfying life.

Yesterday, I came across a short essay that is relevant to mine today. The theme is “Just One Reason We Can Trust the Bible.” It can be found at: https://medium.com/@mlcwriter000/textual-criticism-just-one-reason-we-can-trust-the-bible-5db80355a8db

It confronts the naysayers who do not do any honest research, but still attempt to block our path. Their arguments use innuendo and insinuation, scuttlebutt, gossip, and rumors disguised as fact to distract, confuse, misdirect, and discourage.

Yet, that essay shows that there are many other resources written in the realm of fact and reality, encouraging people to return to live in our meat and potatoes world. Those doing such scholarly work utilize criticism, using the same skeptical approach as used in the Scientific Method.

They are not like the blind leading the blind.

Sticking with the fisherman allegory and the meat and potatoes practicality of the Bible you really ought to read the recollection in John 21.

Nevertheless, please allow me to leave you with this encouraging word which the Disciple, Matthew, the accountant, quoted from Jesus:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Finally, there are many false alternatives to putting your faith in God, Jesus, and the Bible. But which alternatives work in all situations? Which ones demand from you rather than provide for you?

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. — Proverbs 14:12.

Then who loves you and laid down His life for you?

Maybe only battle hardened soldiers can fully understand that Greater love has no one than this, that one should lay down his life for his friends.

The rest of us can at least try to understand. Can’t we?

Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless anyone be born of water and of the Spirit, he is not able to enter into the kingdom of God. That having been born of the flesh is flesh, and that having been born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not wonder that I said to you, ‘It is necessary for you all to be born from above.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know from where it comes and where it goes. Thus is everyone having been born of the Spirit.” — John 3:5–8, BLB.

They’ll Know We Are Christians — Worship Music Video (with Lyrics)