"A thriving upper class accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of untold human beings, who, for its sake, must be reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings,to slaves, to instruments.
One cannot fail to see in all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast, prowling about avidly in search of spoil and victory; this hidden core needs to erupt from time to time, the animal has to get out again and go back to the wilderness.”
Friedrich Nietzsche,
Beyond Good and Evil
“Not everyone who calls out to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of My Father. Many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who practice lawlessness.’
Matthew 7:21-23
"You snakes, you brood of vipers. How can you speak goodness when you are evil? From the depths of the heart the mouth speaks. The good bring forth goodness from their reserves of good, and the evil bring forth evil, from the depths of their treasures wrought in evil."
Matthew 12:34-35
“We are slow to master the great truth that even now Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by His hand, or eye, or voice, bidding us to follow Him. We do not understand that His call is a thing that takes place now. We think it took place in the Apostles' days, but we do not believe in it; we do not look for it in our own case."
John Henry Newman
"The mystery of the poor is this: that they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love."
Dorothy Day
“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given away in marriage, up to the very day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came, and swept them all away."
Luke 17:26-27
"And what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"
Micah 6:8
When people get angry and fall into a prevailing hysteria, they start believing and doing some remarkably foolish and self-destructive things to those around them, their families, and ultimately to themselves.
The message of the gospel is simple, clear, and straightforward.
But the word that has been planted in most is suffocated by the worries of the world, and seduced by wealth.
God does not need us to assert His justice, for we are not just, or to uphold his righteousness, for we are not righteous.
What we tend to be is proud, posturing, and presumptuous.
The only way to remain standing in this madness is to remember that God has called us to love.
But we make His calling disputatious and complex, because the evil in us loves to hide the light with complexity.
It is a way to blind our eyes and harden our hearts against the words of life. It is the leaven of the Pharisees.
If the wages of sin are death, there are a few jokers on the world stage acting like they want us to get paid, sooner rather than later.
Stocks rallied hard into the close.
Gold and silver also drove higher.
VIX started out higher and then fell sharply.
Gold continues to leave the Hong Kong warehouses, as gold flows from West to East.
I will be having a surgery done on my left eye at the end of the week. Hopefully it will go much better than the right eye. But I may be out of pocket.
My positions are fairly light in anticipation of being preoccupied during the FOMC on Wednesday and the Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.
Have a pleasant evening.
