Barry Gear

Devoted Catholic, U.S. Army vet, & business manager. Love theology, history, & apologetics. Avid reader, open-minded, seeking to serve God and defend the truth.

[Barry Gear @GearThomasBarry]

@CatholicArena The war in Iran most definitely does not meet the criteria for the Augustinian/Aquinas "Just War" theory (jus ad bellum)

[Barry Gear @GearThomasBarry]

@indexred I wish he would talk to a good apologist i think he would come around and hopefully come back to Jesus

[Barry Gear @GearThomasBarry]

@NastFatunla How do you not get locked up yappin bout all this tough guy stuff

[Barry Gear @GearThomasBarry]

This is charitable but you either believe the church is the one, true, Apostolic Church that Christ established, led by the holy spirit; or not

[Michael Haynes 🇻🇦 @MLJHaynes]

BREAKING: Pope Leo on the SSPX consecrations —

“I am considering making another appeal and saying ‘don't do this, let's try to live the communion of the Church.’ But it is their choice.

We must realize what it means for them and for the Church. Certainly, the division among Christians is a painful point.

However, they refuse to accept some fundamental elements of the Church, starting with several points of the Second Vatican Council. If they make that choice, I am sorry. But we must move forward”

[Barry Gear @GearThomasBarry]

Idk about narcissist but this is real and weird

[Barry Gear @GearThomasBarry]

@Dexerto I think people say that because he never smiles with his eyes and its off putting

[Barry Gear @GearThomasBarry]

Interesting post

[Faithfulness Okom @AttorneyF_]

I struggled to understand why Jesus praised Peter so highly for identifying him as the Messiah in Matthew 16.

It felt too dramatic, like he was over-spiritualizing something obvious. Peter had been traveling with him, watching the signs firsthand. Of course he knew. The high praise didn’t make sense to me, until I meditated on it.

First-century Judea had a precise and non-negotiable job description for the Messiah: a geopolitical conqueror, a second David who would break Roman occupation over his knee.

What Peter was looking at instead was a broke, unbacked teacher from a backwater town, branded a radical by the religious elite, with no army, no treasury, and no political standing whatsoever. Every physical reality in front of them said no.

The friction ran deeper. Even John the Baptist, who baptized Jesus and heard the voice from heaven, later sent messengers from prison asking, “Are you the one, or do we look for another?” If John doubted after everything he witnessed, the disciples holding steady was not a human achievement. It couldn’t be.

So when Jesus says, “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you,” he is not being dramatic, he is being precise. Left to human logic in that specific moment, concluding he was the Christ was an impossible deduction. The Father had to pull back the curtain.

Immediately after, Jesus speaks of the cross and impending tribulation, and Peter rebukes him: “This shall never happen to you.” It prompts Jesus’s harshest recorded response: “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

Peter’s spectacular crash is the ultimate proof that Jesus wasn’t over-spiritualizing things. The whiplash is the evidence. Left to his own devices for a second, Peter blunders so severely he is called the enemy. The rock instantly becomes a stumbling block. Peter wasn’t a genius; he was a blind man who momentarily had the curtain pulled back.

The Father had unveiled the identity, but not yet its meaning. Peter saw the Who before the What. Revelation is layered. You can receive genuine sight and still be blind to the next dimension because the curtain lifts in stages.

And that is the trap inside the gift of sight. When light comes, it rewrites your memory of the dark. You stop remembering what blindness felt like. Grace becomes furniture. Present, unremarkable, owned but never received.

Paul names this disease in a single sentence: “What do you have that you did not receive?”

The same Father who pulled the curtain back for you has not pulled it back yet for the person next to you, or is pulling it back slowly, the way dawn moves. That is not their failure. It asks of you not contempt but patience; not pride but the tenderness of someone who knows they were also once blind.

“Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you.”

That sentence is not praise. It is a disqualification. Jesus wasn’t honoring Peter’s perception. He was bearing witness to the Father’s action. Peter had no credit to keep, and neither do we. Every confession any of us has ever made was given, not achieved.

The only honest response to clarity you did not earn is not confidence in your own sight. It is wonder. And a tenderness toward the still-blind that only the formerly blind can carry.

[Faithfulness Okom @AttorneyF_]

I struggled to understand why Jesus praised Peter so highly for identifying him as the Messiah in Matthew 16.

It felt too dramatic, like he was over-spiritualizing something obvious. Peter had been traveling with him, watching the signs firsthand. Of course he knew. The high praise didn’t make sense to me, until I meditated on it.

First-century Judea had a precise and non-negotiable job description for the Messiah: a geopolitical conqueror, a second David who would break Roman occupation over his knee.

What Peter was looking at instead was a broke, unbacked teacher from a backwater town, branded a radical by the religious elite, with no army, no treasury, and no political standing whatsoever. Every physical reality in front of them said no.

The friction ran deeper. Even John the Baptist, who baptized Jesus and heard the voice from heaven, later sent messengers from prison asking, “Are you the one, or do we look for another?” If John doubted after everything he witnessed, the disciples holding steady was not a human achievement. It couldn’t be.

So when Jesus says, “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you,” he is not being dramatic, he is being precise. Left to human logic in that specific moment, concluding he was the Christ was an impossible deduction. The Father had to pull back the curtain.

Immediately after, Jesus speaks of the cross and impending tribulation, and Peter rebukes him: “This shall never happen to you.” It prompts Jesus’s harshest recorded response: “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

Peter’s spectacular crash is the ultimate proof that Jesus wasn’t over-spiritualizing things. The whiplash is the evidence. Left to his own devices for a second, Peter blunders so severely he is called the enemy. The rock instantly becomes a stumbling block. Peter wasn’t a genius; he was a blind man who momentarily had the curtain pulled back.

The Father had unveiled the identity, but not yet its meaning. Peter saw the Who before the What. Revelation is layered. You can receive genuine sight and still be blind to the next dimension because the curtain lifts in stages.

And that is the trap inside the gift of sight. When light comes, it rewrites your memory of the dark. You stop remembering what blindness felt like. Grace becomes furniture. Present, unremarkable, owned but never received.

Paul names this disease in a single sentence: “What do you have that you did not receive?”

The same Father who pulled the curtain back for you has not pulled it back yet for the person next to you, or is pulling it back slowly, the way dawn moves. That is not their failure. It asks of you not contempt but patience; not pride but the tenderness of someone who knows they were also once blind.

“Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you.”

That sentence is not praise. It is a disqualification. Jesus wasn’t honoring Peter’s perception. He was bearing witness to the Father’s action. Peter had no credit to keep, and neither do we. Every confession any of us has ever made was given, not achieved.

The only honest response to clarity you did not earn is not confidence in your own sight. It is wonder. And a tenderness toward the still-blind that only the formerly blind can carry.

[The Culturist @the_culturist_]

Tom Bombadil is the most mysterious character in The Lord of the Rings.

He's the oldest being in Middle-earth and completely immune to the Ring's power — but why?

Bombadil is the key to the underlying ethics of the entire story, and to resisting evil yourself...

Tom Bombadil is an enigmatic, merry hermit of the countryside, known as "oldest and fatherless" by the Elves. He is truly ancient, and claims he was "here before the river and the trees." He's so confounding that Peter Jackson left him out of the films entirely.

This is understandable, since he's unimportant to the development of the plot. Tolkien, however, saw fit to include him anyway, because Tom reveals a lot about the underlying ethics of Middle-earth, and how to shield yourself from evil.

The hobbits meet Bombadil early on in their quest, before they reach Bree and the Prancing Pony Inn. He rescues Merry and Pippin from Old Man Willow, and invites the hobbits to stay at his house in the Old Forest.

There, the hobbits realize something strange about him: the Ring has no power over Bombadil whatsoever.

When he wears it, he remains visible. He treats it as a plaything, making it disappear with a magic trick. Indeed, at the Council of Elrond, Gandalf rejects the idea of giving the Ring to Tom, for he would likely misplace it or forget about it entirely.

So just who is he, exactly?

When Frodo asks this very question to Tom's wife Goldberry, she simply responds "He is." It's a cryptic answer that echoes God's famous answer to Moses in the Book of Exodus: "I am who I am."

Thus, many theorize that Bombadil is God, some kind of angelic being, or even the spirit of the Music of the Ainur (due to the fact that he is constantly singing). But Tolkien's letters reveal something considerably more interesting…

In April 1954, Tolkien wrote:

"The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship… but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control.But if you have, as it were, taken a 'vow of poverty', renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself… then the questions of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless…"

So, Bombadil is a representation of what it means to take pure delight in the world around you — to experience people and things simply as they are, without any thought for what they could be or how you could use them. And this is why the Ring has no power over him.

To Bombadil, the One Ring is simply a ring, and the possibilities of what can be achieved through its power are of no importance. He is able to resist its evil precisely because he is entirely content with the world around him.

At the end of the story, having accomplished what he set out to do in Middle-earth, Gandalf pays Tom a visit before returning to the Undying Lands:

"I am going to have a long talk with Bombadil: such a talk as I have not had in all my time."

If Bombadil is the epitome of simply enjoying life and being, Gandalf is the epitome of doing. He guides the hobbits, fights the Balrog, and runs up and down Middle-earth to help destroy the One Ring.

But now that he's finally liberated from doing, he immediately heads to Bombadil's. He does so with a sense of relief, as if he's at last able to access a purer and higher mode of being — a sort of innocence that cannot be fully experienced by those consumed by doing.

Of course, by this Tolkien doesn't disparage the value of action. The entirety of LOTR displays the importance of rising up against evil, even in the face of all odds. But with the inclusion of Bombadil, he does remind readers that fighting isn't all there is.

Bombadil reminds us that while it's important to strive and *do*, it is just as important to occasionally step back and *be*. Indeed, your ability to do so plays a crucial role in helping you resist the allure of evil…

Read the full piece here:

https://t.co/aqK2daehIL

The unsung hero of The Lord of the Rings...

[Barry Gear @GearThomasBarry]

@LlaveAlMisterio I have always thought this 👍

[Barry Gear @GearThomasBarry]

@NorCalGroyper Huge knicks fan trapped in a small artists body

[Barry Gear @GearThomasBarry]

@TomTomAldon You are the Funniest guy on the internet love the positivity ❤️

[Barry Gear @GearThomasBarry]

👍

[Barry Gear @GearThomasBarry]

"Because we didnt evolve down there" 🤯 human bodies totally can survive down there and sat divers do all the time. Its actually a really interesting and unique way our bodies process the extra pressure through on gassing/off gassing reduced to "we cant go down there cuz evolution is wild work.

[Barry Gear @GearThomasBarry]

@QuarterZippedxx "Pistol wavin New Haven" 😂

[Barry Gear @GearThomasBarry]

@JoeRoganRecaps Thats totally false

[Barry Gear @GearThomasBarry]

@TylerGlaiel Seven Samurai

[Barry Gear @GearThomasBarry]

@JoshuaBarzon E all day

[Barry Gear @GearThomasBarry]

That guy smells his own farts so hard