#living with this view of reality is so fundamentally wrong jesus christ

[jewishcissiekj]

Dear DISGUSTING, VILE classmates I despise the energy we've created in the Zoom call today

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

14th April >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on John 3:16-21 for Wednesday, Second Week of Eastertide: ‘Light has come into the world’.

Wednesday, Second Week of Eastertide

Gospel (Except USA)

John 3:16-21

God sent his Son into the world so that through him the world might be saved.

Jesus said to Nicodemus:

‘God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved. No one who believes in him will be condemned; but whoever refuses to believe is condemned already, because he has refused to believe in the name of God’s only Son. On these grounds is sentence pronounced: that though the light has come into the world men have shown they prefer darkness to the light because their deeds were evil. And indeed, everybody who does wrong hates the light and avoids it, for fear his actions should be exposed; but the man who lives by the truth comes out into the light, so that it may be plainly seen that what he does is done in God.’

Gospel (USA)

John 3:16-21

God sent his Son that the world might be saved through him.

God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.

Reflections (5)

(i) Wednesday, Second Week of Easter

The gospel of John frequently refers to Jesus as light. On one occasion, Jesus says of himself: ‘I am the light of the world’. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus says with reference to himself: ‘Light has come into the world’. In one of the most memorable statements of the New Testament the gospel reading declares that the light that has come into the world in the person of Jesus is the light of God’s love, ‘God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him… may have eternal life’. The light of Jesus is not the probing light of the grand inquisitor that seeks out failure and transgression with a view to condemnation. Indeed, the gospel reading states that God ‘sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world’. The light of Jesus, rather, is the inviting light of God’s love, calling out to us to come and to allow ourselves to be bathed in this light, and promising those who do so that they will share in God’s own life, both here and now and also beyond death. At the beginning of our gospel reading, Jesus speaks of himself as the Son of Man who must be lifted up. It was on the cross and in his resurrection that Jesus was lifted up, and it was above all at that moment that the light of God’s love shone most brightly. Those who attempted to extinguish God’s light shining in Jesus only succeeded in making that light of love shine all the more brightly. God’s gift of his Son to us was not in any way thwarted by the rejection of his Son. God’s giving continued as Jesus was lifted up to die, and God’s giving found further expression when God lifted up his Son in glory and gave him to us as risen Lord. Here indeed is a light that darkness cannot overcome, a love that human sin cannot extinguish. This is the core of the gospel.

And/Or

(ii) Wednesday, Second Week of Easter

We can certainly notice a stretch in the evenings these days. All of a sudden it is bright beyond 7.00 pm. Most of us like the light. We are pleased to know that the daylight is lengthening every day at this time of the year. Our heart sinks a bit when we realize that the days have begun to get shorter. Even though most of us like the light, the gospel reading declares that people have shown they prefer darkness to light. The evangelist is referring there not to daylight, but to the one who declares himself to be the light of the world. Our calling is to ‘come out into the light’, in the words of the gospel reading. This morning’s gospel reading makes the very generous statement that all who live by the truth come out into the light. All who seek the truth are already standing in the light of Christ, even though they may not be aware of it. The gospel reading suggests that people of faith, those who seek to be guided by the light of Christ, will always have something very fundamental in common with all who seek the truth with sincerity of heart.

 And/Or

(iii) Wednesday, Second Week of Easter

One of the great verses of John’s gospel is to be found at the beginning of our gospel reading this morning, ‘God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him... may have eternal life’. That statement has been a source of inspiration for many believers over the centuries. The evangelist declares that Jesus, God’s Son, reveals God’s love for the world and for each of us individually. All authentic love is life-giving, and God’s love, revealed in the coming of Jesus, is life-giving to an exceptional degree. God gave us his Son so that we might have life and have it to the full, what this morning’s gospel reading calls ‘eternal life’. Therein lies the gospel, the good news of God’s loving and life-giving initiative towards us. The fourth evangelist is also clear that God’s initiative needs our response if it is to be effective. We need to come to God’s Son, to come out into the light, in the words of gospel reading. Having come to God’s Son, we need to remain in him, to remain in his love, and we do that by keeping his word, by living out his new commandment to love one another as he has loved us. God has given his Son to us; it falls to us to give ourselves to God’s Son. Then we will indeed have life and have it to the full.

 And/Or

(iv) Wednesday, Second Week of Easter

The words of Jesus to Nicodemus in this morning’s gospel reading are one of the strongest and most positive statements in the New Testament about God. It speaks of God’s love for the world, of God’s generous way of expressing his love by giving the world his Son and of God’s desire that all people would experience eternal life through receiving God’s Son in faith. It is a hugely positive image of God and of how God relates to the world. It is a verse worth pondering and reflecting upon at length. Yet, the gospel reading we have just heard acknowledges another reality. It recognizes that people can refuse God’s love, God’s gift of his Son, God’s offer of life. In the words of the gospel reading, ‘though the light has come into the world, people have shown that they prefer darkness to the light, because their deeds were evil’. God can only do so much. We have to open ourselves to God’s love, receive God’s Son, enter into the light and allow it to shine upon us. God wants our response, but God cannot force it. Yet, God is prepared to wait, as Jesus was prepared to wait for Nicodemus. Heonly gradually came to believe in Jesus as God’s Son given to the world out of love. His first tentative step was to come to Jesus by night. His last appearance in the gospel is alongside Joseph of Arimathea, as they both arrange for Jesus to have a dignified burial.

 And/Or

(v) Wednesday, Second Week of Easter.

A common security measure in many homes and businesses are strong lights that come on at night when somebody comes within a certain radius and breaks the beam. It is based on the presumption that light is the enemy of anyone who might want to break into the premises. Those who might be up to no good prefer the cover of darkness. In the words of today’s gospel reading, ‘everybody who does wrong hates the light and avoids it, for fear his actions should be exposed’. Light exposes wrong doing. In a sense, it condemns the wrong doer. According to the gospel reading, God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world. Jesus speaks of himself in this gospel as ‘the light of the world’. When the gospel reading says that ‘the light has come into the world’, the reference is clearly to Jesus. Yet, the light of Jesus is not primarily a condemnatory light whose primary purpose is to expose evil. The light of Jesus is a light of love, the light of God who so loved the world that he gave his only Son. When we step into this light, there is a sense in which our sins are exposed. To see ourselves in the light of Jesus is to recognize how far we fall short of the person God has created us to be. Yet, the primary purpose of this loving light is to take away our sin. Jesus, the light of God, seeks us draw us to himself so that we may have life and have it to the full. The Lord’s light is not in any way threatening. There is a fullness of life there from which we are all invited to receive.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[anonymoustalks]

You cant just oppress me for having different views, that's Fascism!!!!

(6-14-20) You both like politics.

You: heya

Stranger: Hello

You: anything on your mind today?

Stranger: No

You: fair enough ^^

You: any issues that you care about?

Stranger: Not really

You: is there a reason why you like this tag then?

Stranger: To talk about Politics

You: mhm anything particular about it?

Stranger: Anything

You: mhm do you have a particular political leaning?

Stranger: Fascist

You: ohh interesting

You: why fascism, btw?

You: I never really understood it

Stranger: Because it aligns with my values

You: your values being... strength? authority...?

Stranger: Strength, Honor, Spirituality, Race, Masculinity

You: I didn't realize spirituality was a big part of fascism

Stranger: Most people don't know anything about Fascism beyond something about the holocaust

You: fair enough

You: how did you learn about fascism?

Stranger: I read the Doctrine of Fascism

You: who is that by?

Stranger: Benito Mussolini and Gentile

You: oh is it good?

Stranger: It explains Fascism, it serves it's purpose

You: I guess so

You: are there like fascist communities out there?

Stranger: Not really

You: so it's mostly just you and yourself?

Stranger: I've known many other Fascists, but most of them are dead or in prison, so for now yes

You: ...how old are you?

Stranger: 29

You: I didn't realize that fascists end up in prison so easily

Stranger: Well we're Fascists living in a mostly liberal world

You: I guess so

You: I had a question about fascism actually

You: so... with many different fascist cultures... liking different racists... do you hate each other?

You: or do you get along because you're all kinda similar politically?

You: *liking different races

Stranger: Well this is a fundamental misunderstanding of our worldview

You: do you mind explaining more?

Stranger: So

Stranger: We don't hate each other even though we understand at some point we will have to kill each other

You: (wow that's dramatic...)

Stranger: To us that is simply reality, hatred is not necessary to accomplish this reality

Stranger: So why have any

You: I see

You: for me it's kind of difficult why so many cultures are transfixed with...

You: jewish people

You: idk

You: idk why the hate, in other words

You: *difficult to understand

Stranger: I don't hate jews

Stranger: The hatred towards jews came from the fact that many of them were Marxists

You: ah... I didn't know that

Stranger: Yeah I'm not surprised, most people don't know anything about Fascism but hate it anyways

You: what's your opinion of North Korea

You: are they more fascist or communist?

Stranger: They're just totalitarian. I wouldn't say they're either

You: so totalitarian =/= fascist

Stranger: Are you joking

You: idk, I really don't know much

You: I think of a long of strong personality figures who grabbed for lots of power in many fascist regimes

Stranger: Lol

You: sorry if I don't understand much

Stranger: It's not that you don't understand much you don't seem to know anything about it

You: yeah

You: so are there any countries today that are close to fascist?

Stranger: No

You: so what does a fascist state entail?

Stranger: That depends on the spiritual teachings in that particular race

You: hm...

You: I feel like I'm thinking about those religious states like iran

Stranger: What about it

You: idk just the wording of "spiritual teachings"

You: I think I'm just lost on what fascism means

You: like I think there are a bunch of countries that are fairly ethnocentric -- like I think Japan is pretty ethnocentric, right?

You: and other countries that have a powerful spiritual component

You: and others that emphasize a strong state power

Stranger: What's your point

You: do you mix them together and you get fascism?

Stranger: That's just right-wing populism

You: so what's the different between that and fascism?

Stranger: Fascism is not right-wing populism

You: So Wikipedia's definition is this: "Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, as well as strong regimentation of society and of the economy which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe." which is why I'm a little lost

Stranger: That looks like it was written by a liberal college student

You: ^^ so how would you describe it then?

Stranger: Fascism is the syncretic blend of the Super-World and the Material world

You: umm, I'm a little lost by that ^^

Stranger: You're going to have to be more specific

You: I have no idea what "syncretic blend" and "super-world" and "material world" mean

Stranger: Syncretism is a union or attempted fusion of different religions, cultures, or philosophies — like Halloween, which has both Christian and pagan roots, or the combination of Aristotelian philosophy with the belief system of the early punk rock practitioners.

Stranger: Picture that, but with the union of a spiritual belief with a lifestyle and society

You: what kinds of spiritual belief?

Stranger: That obviously depends on your religious beliefs

You: I'm just a little bit confused about how that's different from an authoritarian theocracy?

Stranger: The Super-World is the metaphysical source of the material world, like Heaven

Stranger: Because not all religions are authoritarian in nature

You: interesting

You: it's quite a lot for me to wrap my head around

You: so if they're not authoritarian... how do they maintain a strong regimented state/economy?

Stranger: Why would they need to

You: well, I thought fascism wasn't very tolerant of per say democratic discourse

You: so something needs to enforce the ruling law?

Stranger: As I said, not all religions are authoritarian

Stranger: That is their problem

Stranger: They will figure it out

You: I see... do you mind if I ask about your faith?

Stranger: I am a Christian

You: is Christianity authoritarian?

Stranger: Yes

You: why is it authoritarian if you don't mind me asking?

Stranger: We can start with the most obvious

Stranger: Jesus Christ is meant to rule forever as King over heaven

Stranger: When the Hebrews asked God for a King, he gave them one

You: okay I see

Stranger: Here of course we see a strong condemnation of rebellious behavior:

Stranger: Romans 13:1-7 New International Version (NIV) Submission to Governing Authorities 13 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.

Stranger: This, is naturally and clearly authoritarian

You: thanks

You: how do you handle the many denominations of Christianity?

Stranger: Well if it was up to me I would have all of their churches destroyed

Stranger: Infact I would have all churches destroyed

You: I see... what denomination is your church?

Stranger: I do not go to church

You: okay so definitely not Catholic XD

Stranger: No, I am a Christian

Stranger: I follow the teachings of Christ, not the teachings of a church

You: mhm okay

You: so what happens if you have a lot of people who resist... your interpretation?

Stranger: That depends on the level of resistance

You: idk people who disagree on teachings that obviously I'm not knowledgeable enough to speak about?

Stranger: Is English not your first language

You: mhm it is

Stranger: What do you think "level of resistance" means

You: open rebellion?

You: protests?

Stranger: Are you a woman

You: uhhh why does that matter?

Stranger: This seems above your ability to fully grasp so it makes me think you are a woman

You: oh okay ^^;;

Stranger: Are you

You: so if I'm not, then it is okay for me to grasp?

Stranger: If you are not then you are just a very stupid male

You: sure let's go with that

Stranger: Answer the question

You: I'm trying to understand

You: I'll decline to answer your question

You: does that qualify as open rebellion?

Stranger: Yes

You: I see... it's not very an aggressive form of resistance though?

You: it's kind of petty, actually

Stranger: And

Stranger: "You cant just oppress me for having different views, that's Fascism!!!!"

Stranger: Exactly

You: hm?

Stranger: Are you autistic or something

You: sure

Stranger: You seem incapable of understanding basic things

You: It's not a subject I hear a lot about, so I'm asking a lot questions so I understand

Stranger: Good Lord

Stranger: I am not even talking about Fascism

Stranger: That is what I mean

Stranger: Your ability to communicate with other humans seems to be handicapped

You: maybe, it's omegle though so it's fairly low stakes

Stranger: Lol

You: I mean I don't think I'm wrong lol

Stranger: How could you even if you were

You: tell if I'm wrong?

You: I have no idea

You: I feel like it's hard to tell without other people telling you

You: and then you reflect based on what others tell you

Stranger: I have never relied on others telling me I am wrong to decide if I am

You: I'm not sure if "reliance" is the right word

You: I guess I would call it "feedback"

Stranger: I will be back

You: and then "reflect" on a day?

You: okay

Stranger: I am back

You: ok

You: can't find my laptop charger

Stranger: Let us talk about being stupid

You: sure

Stranger: Do you know why you are stupid

You: why don't you tell me what you think?

Stranger: Because you were not born to be a grand leader

Stranger: You are a simple person meant to lead a simple life

Stranger: In the modern world, because everyone is full of themselves and feed their ego incessently this is an insult

You: an insult huh?

You: so how can you tell if someone is destined for greatness?

Stranger: Yes, because everyone wants to be special

Stranger: A person that is destined for greatness is marked by 5 signs

You: I think Western culture is heavily individualistic

Stranger: 1. Ability to endure any amount of humiliation

Stranger: 2. Can see the bigger picture of things, and is not limited by the perspective of their life

Stranger: 3. Understands people well and can make them work together

Stranger: 4. Has the will and strength to endure all tragedies of life

Stranger: 5. Is not enslaved by their own personal nature

You: That's a very interesting list

You: where did you get it from?

Stranger: I just came up with it

You: oh, that's cool

You: the suffering and humiliation is notable to me

You: have you experienced a lot of it?

Stranger: Yes

You: can you tell me more?

Stranger: The list is too long

You: is there something that stands out?

Stranger: And most of it is not worth mentioning

Stranger: Because I have grown out of all of it

You: I imagine that it's not a bunch of small things?

You: it should be a big thing, right?

Stranger: The point is, I have moved on, it is in the past and that is where it will stay

You: I see

You: What do you mean by not enslaved by their own personal nature?

Stranger: "I'm tired"

Stranger: "this is too hard"

Stranger: "I want to have sex"

You: mhm okay

Stranger: "I'm hungry"

Stranger: "I want more"

Stranger: "I want less"

Stranger: If you are able to conquer your nature then you will master your body

Stranger: Think about Kings and Emperors in history

You: I guess that's good

Stranger: The worst ones are always depicted as the ones who only cared about pleasure

You: right

Stranger: The ones that only cared about expensive clothing

Stranger: Things like that

Stranger: A King cannot be a master of his people if he has not mastered himself

Stranger: This is why Jesus Christ went through all the temptations of sin, and the physical torture

Stranger: Why he gave up all his things and lived as a nomad

Stranger: In order to conquer His body

You: mhm

You: what is your life like right now?

Stranger: In what context

You: idk, just in general

You: it sounds like you live a very disciplined life

Stranger: I try to

Stranger: I am closer than I ever have been, at least

You: that's good!

You: so it sounds like you've been through difficult times, and things are heading upwards?

Stranger: Something like that

You: mhm that's great

Stranger: Well

Stranger: If I end up homeless it is still better than having a home without discipline

Stranger: So I don't think we have the same definition of upwards

You: homeless?

Stranger: You don't know what that means

Stranger: ?

You: well yeah I do, but how would you end up homeless?

Stranger: How am I supposed to know? Anything can happen

You: I guess that's true

You: you just seemed worried about bad things in the future

Stranger: Bad things?

You: You said "I don't think we have the same definition of upwards"

You: meaning that from my point of view, I may not think you are heading upwards?

Stranger: My soul belongs to Jesus Christ, what could possibly be a 'bad thing' when I already have everything

You: mhm right

You: do you ever get lonely?

You: without a congregation or anything?

Stranger: No I do not

You: why did you stop going to church?

Stranger: I had no purpose there except to see a girl, and I considered that to be a wrong reason

You: Ah, okay

You: what kind of changed your views suddenly?

Stranger: It is never sudden, everyday (if you are trying) a person becomes more and more aware of life and pays more attention. You eventually start learning and changing accordingly

You: mhm okay

You: it sounds like it's been a long journey for you then

You: and an isolated road to?

Stranger: I am isolated now, for good reason

You: coronavirus?

Stranger: No

You: because?

Stranger: Because

Stranger: It is easy to be a Christian when your friends are Christians

Stranger: It is easy to be a Christian when you hear teachings from the bible every sunday

Stranger: It is easy to be a Christian when all the events you go to are by other Christians

Stranger: I do not want to lead this life because of the people around me, I want to be a Christian because I choose to be

Stranger: I can only do this alone

You: it sounds sad to push away everyone close to you though

Stranger: I will give you a hint, there was barely any pushing

You: is there a way to choose to be Christian yet still be close to others?

You: oh

You: was it always that way or did something happen?

Stranger: Yes

Stranger: You just need to pick Christ first, and friends second

Stranger: I grew up with a lot of friends, so it was the opposite for me

Stranger: I am not rectifying this

You: Ah...

You: well, if you are happy now, I guess that's fine

Stranger: Happy?

Stranger: Happiness has never really been important to me, I don't really care about it

You: fulfillment then?

Stranger: Sure

You: okay

You: how old are you?

Stranger: 29

You: you live alone?

Stranger: No, I live with my mother

You: mhm is she well?

Stranger: She is fine

You: that's good

You: can I ask why you think the way you do about women?

Stranger: Because women are not suited to be leaders

You: I mean you seemed to think women weren't able to comprehend the things you were talking about?

Stranger: Yes

You: why is that?

Stranger: Because women are not suited to be leaders

You: I mean comprehending doesn't have to do with leading, does it?

You: They're different skill sets

Stranger: ...

Stranger: If you cannot comprehend it, it is because it is beyond your station

You: ...

You: I mean, comprehending a book is entirely different than leading an army

Stranger: This is exactly what I am talking about

Stranger: You are not even on the same page as me

Stranger: What I just said went completely over your head

You: Yeah it did

You: Are you suggesting that comprehension is essential to being a leader? That makes sense

You: But the inverse seems like a stretch to me

You: that being a leader is necessary to read books?

Stranger: No

Stranger: I am saying if you cannot understand what is being said, that is because you do not need to

You: oh, okay...

You: for some reason I had interpreted that as "unable to" versus "do not need to"

Stranger: Okay

You: so basically you believe people are destined for certain things?

Stranger: Yes

You: and there are certain signs that indicate you are destined for greatness?

Stranger: Yes

You: how does greatness manifest in different lifetimes and times?

You: I mean, you said for yourself that this isn't really a time for fascism

Stranger: When did I say that

You: well that western society isn't very kind to it

You: so it's a little hard to imagine a fascist society popping up in America in our lifetime

Stranger: So I'm here waiting for you to make a point

You: I don't really have a point?

You: I was hoping to understand how you view greatness

You: in a culture and society that doesn't appreciate your views?

Stranger: What does American culture and society have to do with how I view greatness

You: I sounded like you implied that you were destined for greatness, but I may have misread your meaning

Stranger: I am

You: so how will you be great?

You: I guess that's my question

Stranger: That remains to be seen

You: Do you have a sense of what direction it will be?

Stranger: It is more important to focus on the day and hour you are living in

You: that's fair

You: I guess it's true it's important not to get ahead of ourselves

You: I was wondering you had any specific goals or dreams

Stranger: Follow God, that is all I need to do

You: mhm

You: So it's kind of like God will show you the way when it's the right time?

Stranger: He always does

You: right

You: Do you come on Omegle a lot?

Stranger: When I have nothing else to do

You: Do you have any other hobbies?

Stranger: Training

You: working out or something more specific?

Stranger: Working out

You: Mhm I think that's good

You: does your mom still work?

Stranger: No

You: and yourself?

Stranger: I was employed, but I realized I was there for the wrong reasons and left

You: Ah... what kind wrong reasons?

Stranger: I was only going because I wanted to see a girl

You: ...Were there multiple girls?

You: The church one and also the work one?

Stranger: Yes

You: oh

You: And dating is sort of incompatible with your faith?

Stranger: No

You: It's a little bit harder for me to understand going to work for the wrong reasons

You: like I can understand going to church for the wrong reasons

You: but work I'm not sure if I understand

Stranger: How is it any different

You: Mhm, I feel like faith is different?

Stranger: It has nothing to do with faith

You: I mean I feel like you should go to church for your faith, not for romance

You: on the other hand, I don't really see anything wrong with liking someone at work

You: (or school or something else similar)

Stranger: I cant believe this has to be explained

You: sorry

Stranger: There was a girl at church

Stranger: I liked her

Stranger: I was only going to see her

Stranger: So I stopped

Stranger: There was a girl at work

Stranger: I liked her

Stranger: I was only there to see her

Stranger: So I stopped

Stranger: How is this confusing to you

You: I think I'm just not understand why you decided to stop seeing the girl at work

You: if you're able to keep working, that is

Stranger: Because I was not working

You: oh okay

Stranger: I spent most of my time talking to her

You: right

Stranger: And would regularly tell my manager to mind his business if he ever mentioned it

You: right

You: are you looking to get another job?

Stranger: No, I need to set myself right first before getting back into the world

You: mhm

You: I guess that's understandable

You: how does your mother feel?

Stranger: She is fine

You: it's good if you have a good relationship with her

Stranger: Yes

You: what kind of work did you do?

You: before?

Stranger: Industrial Labor

You: Will you be okay financially?

Stranger: Yes

You: That's good

You: I wonder what the coronavirus was like in your area

Stranger: I don't pay attention

You: how do you normally spend your day these days?

Stranger: Training and reading

You: What kind of reading?

Stranger: The bible and military history

You: Why military history?

Stranger: Because I like it

You: Ah okay

You: have you always liked it?

Stranger: Yes

You: favorite period?

Stranger: I don't have a favorite period

You: oh I thought a lot of people had a favorite battle or a favorite country/nation

Stranger: Okay

You: okay

You: well, if the conversation seems to be dying down, thank you for explaining things

Stranger: For all the good it will do

You: who knows, it was an experience for me, I guess?

You: in either case, I wish you the best!

Stranger: Lol

You: is it that funny?

Stranger: Yes

You: >.>

You: Why? Are you used to getting tons of hate or something?

Stranger: Because I am a Fascist. You hoping "the best" for me would most likely work against you

You: Mhm, I guess I'm taking my chances lol

You: to me you're still a person

You: living somewhere in America

Stranger: What does that have to do with anything

You: idk, I think our worldviews don't really align -- I kind of wish for everyone to find happiness

Stranger: Why

You: call me a pacifist or something idk

You: I dunno, do I need a reason?

Stranger: It just seems arbitrary to me

You: I'm not sure why I have the values that I do

You: they are somewhat important to me though

Stranger: They are strange to me

You: I guess

You: I suppose I don't have the strongest sense of self-preservation

You: I was slightly suicidal years ago

You: although I'm better now

Stranger: I consider people that commit suicide to be pathetic, depending on the reasoning

You: I didn't have strong reasoning, probably just generic mental health issues

You: in either case, having greater purpose of some kind makes me feel better

You: for me, being able to spread something positive is meaningful

Stranger: For me the only appropriate time to kill oneself is if you are about to be captured by an enemy

Stranger: If you are paralyzed

Stranger: If you can no longer walk

Stranger: If you lose your reproductive organs

You: These seem heavily honor-focused

Stranger: That is the kind of person I am

You: I seems like your honor means a lot to you, which I guess is honorable too

You: (my goodness the pun lol)

Stranger: Well

You: although I mean not sure if all of those things are worth a life, at least in my view

Stranger: I am a man, if I cannot protect the women in my life then I have no reason to live

You: I'm not really sure how to respond to that

Stranger: If a man cannot defend his people, then what is the point of his existence

Stranger: Seems pointless to me, better off just killing yourself

You: I think people can find things important to them over time

You: and I think we all experience loss

Stranger: It doesn't matter if they find something important to them

Stranger: They are useless if they cannot defend women

You: ^^ maybe some women don't want to be defended?

Stranger: What kind of woman would not want to be defended from an attacker

You: It is figurative in multiple different ways

Stranger: What?

Stranger: Why would a woman not want someone to defend her from an attacker?

You: I think some women don't want to be defended from unspecified "threats", if they have't asked for help

Stranger: So if someone is breaking into my home an tries to attack my mother, I need to wait for her to ask me for help?

You: nope, depends on the person

Stranger: It depends on the person?

Stranger: There are women out there that would get angry if you stopped a rapist from raping her?

You: I think I'm referring to less literal things than that, but I feel like this is a difficult conversation to have

Stranger: I do not find it difficult

Stranger: Again

Stranger: There are women out there that would get angry if you stopped a rapist from raping her because you did not ask her first?

You: I think I was somewhat reacting to this link: "If a man cannot defend his people, then what is the point of his existence"

You: If you failed do defend someone you love, I don't think they would want you to commit suicide

Stranger: You misunderstand me, yet again

You: likewise, I don't think that people always hold those expectations that men will defend women anymore

Stranger: A wife does not expect her husband to protect her?

Stranger: A mother does not expect her son to protect her?

Stranger: A daughter does not expect her father to protect her?

Stranger: A sister does not expect a brother to protect her?

You: I think there are circumstances that a husband can misunderstand what constitutes "protecting" his wife

Stranger: We are not talking about those circumstances

You: Someone more conservatively minded may consider that a a certain male friend that daughter has is a threat

Stranger: I do not care about that

Stranger: I know what I am talking about

Stranger: And that is all that matters

You: okay

Stranger: I am not interested in how others interpret it

Stranger: I am talking about what I am talking about

Stranger: Not how others would perceive that

You: okay

Stranger: So why are you bringing that up?

You: I dunno, it didn't sit very well with me for some reason

Stranger: You are against protecting the women you care about from attackers?

You: No, I think I had a different interpretation of your statement than you meant it

Stranger: What I said was very straight forward

You: I was just thinking of times when other people wanted things for me that I didn't want for myself

Stranger: You were thinking of a time someone broke into your home or raped you, and got angry at someone intervening?

You: Nope, we are thinking of different things

Stranger: What I said was straight forward

Stranger: How could you misinterpret it?

You: I think the mentality was similar to something else that I recognized

Stranger: So you accused me of something instead of asking me to clarify

You: Sorry; I think we just took "defended" to mean different things

You: Like for me I was thinking of the more figurative instances like: "I am defending your interests" "This is good for you" "That's bad for you"

Stranger: I never said anything like that

You: You didn't

Stranger: The exampled I gave were of paralyzed men or missing limbs or unable to walk

Stranger: It should have been obvious that when I said defending I was talking about something physical

You: Yeah, sorry, I think my own experiences just got in the way

Stranger: But instead your pathetic biases lead you into a conclusion that was erroneous

Stranger: Because you have a preconceived notion of what certain people are like

Stranger: Nothing to say?

You: Yeah, not really, sorry

Stranger: So what are you waiting around for?

You: I tabbed away briefly

You: I'm not sure what I'm waiting for

You: what about you?

Stranger: I am waiting for a response

You: I admit that I have baggage

You: I think a lot of people have baggage, and it leads to numerous misunderstandings

Stranger: I have absconded with mine. Why haven't you?

You: Hm? I don't always perceive it as a weakness though

You: I think we are the sum of our experiences

You: the good ones and the bad ones

Stranger: You are making me angry

You: sorry

Stranger: I cant stand when people blame their past for their behavior

You: what should I say instead?

Stranger: How about nothing

Stranger: How about you instead let go of the past and not let it dictate who you are

You: I don't exactly have a bad relationship with my past though

You: I like the way that my past has shaped the current me

Stranger: Why were you hesitant to tell me you are a woman

You: well let me scroll up

You: "This seems above your ability to fully grasp so it makes me think you are a woman"

You: ^ How would somebody not react negatively to that?

Stranger: Why would you hide it

You: Because I was annoyed for a moment and decided to be annoying in a brief moment

Stranger: Typical female behavior

Stranger: Passive aggressiveness and pettiness

Stranger: Did that annoy you too?

You: No, I'm not really that surprised anymore

Stranger: How old are you

You: 26

Stranger: I thought I was talking to a teenager

You: mhm, I've been told similar before

Stranger: Are you married

You: no

Stranger: Why not

You: why should I?

Stranger: Are you ugly

You: lol does it matter to you?

Stranger: Yes

You: sure, let's say I'm ugly then

Stranger: What do you look like

You: I don't feel any need to continue this conversation down this path

Stranger: Lol

Stranger: Alright then

Stranger: Does it make you uncomfortable

You: yes and no, but mostly no

Stranger: So what is the issue

You: I have my own moral standards too

Stranger: Do your moral standards prohibit you from talking about your face

You: pretty much

You: you can think of it as a high bar that makes it easy to define something black and white

Stranger: What is your race

You: loool

You: why do you suddenly care now?

Stranger: You said 'black and white' and it reminded me of something I forgot to ask earlier

You: lol

You: do you normally ask early on?

Stranger: Yes, it is important to know

You: lol I guess it's your fault for forgetting to ask

Stranger: Yes, so what is your race

You: I'm skipping this question and leaving it to you to interpret it in the worst way possible ^^

You: seems fun to me

Stranger: You are Asian

You: why would you think that?

Stranger: I am a racist. Determining race is inherent

You: it's kind of amusing to me that you picked asian

Stranger: Well if you must know

Stranger: You tend to take things a little literally, and you have a formal tone, and that is typical for Asians

Stranger: The way you respond to certain things suggests a very foreign cultural background

Stranger: All of that to me says Asian

Stranger: Oriental, rather

You: Fine, helpful of you to put it into words I guess

Stranger: Is it still amusing

You: Maybe?

You: I thought certain things were just me though

Stranger: So can you tell me your race

Stranger: If you are worried that I will make fun of you for it, I do not mock people anymore

You: nah, I won't share details

You: I'm a little stubborn in the sense that once I've decided something, I'm pretty adamant about it

You: but you are welcome to believe what you believe

Stranger: What is the purpose of not sharing that detail

You: it's an emotional defense mechanism for myself

You: there are certain lines that I do not cross on omegle

Stranger: I already said I will not mock you or use it against you

You: it is a rule that I hold myself to

You: that's not really the point

Stranger: Alright then

Stranger: Let us talk outside of omegle

You: lol and that is one of my rules lol

Stranger: Unfortunate

You: is it?

Stranger: I will not insist

Stranger: Yes

Stranger: I was starting to like you

You: I'm flattered, but I'm not interested in using omegle for those purposes

Stranger: What purpose are you referring to

You: mhm, getting to know people in the many ways that it means

Stranger: That is disappointing

You: I am actually rather distrusting and antisocial to some regards

You: in either case, I'm not interested in friends

Stranger: I understand

You: In either case, thank you for spending this time with me, and I feel like I was able to hear a lot

Stranger: Alright

You: best wishes to you and your mom!

Stranger: Lol

[dailyaudiobible]

08/23/2021 DAB Transcript

Job 8:1-11:20, 1 Corinthians 15:1-28, Psalm 38:1-22, Proverbs 21:28-29

Today is the 23rd day of August, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible, I’m Brian, it is wonderful to be here with you today. A joy, that we can come together like this around the Global Campfire. Find a place, exhale, let it go and just be here as we allow God's word to speak and wash into our lives and wash our hearts and minds and carry us forward. So, let's set dive in, we’re reading from the New Living Translation this week. We are a couple of days into the book of Job. We have found out what happened to Job. He lost everything systematically one thing after another, after another, after another in one day, until it was all gone and we can probably all say that we’ve felt like one thing after another, after another has happened in our own lives, but he lost his family, his fortune, his staff, his livestock, everything. One thing right after the other in the same day and we watched him, you just can't even imagine the shock of something like that, anyone one thing that happened to Job on the day would've sent any of us into the depths and he had all these things happened and you just can’t imagine the just the shock of it, but he tore his robes and he threw ashes on his head and all of this, but he fell to his knees and worshiped God and took a posture that everything he had was from God and if God took away then blessed be the name of the Lord, but Job is really confused. He doesn't know what he did wrong. He believes that God is judging him. He believes that what is happening to him is at the hand of the Lord. His friends have come to comfort him. They have started giving him advice and encouragement. Basically, like a something's gotta be, there’s got to be more to the story, God...God is righteous. He's not, you know, if he doesn't punish people for no reason and then Job is just crying out. First of all, in anguish and very understandable ways. He’s saying things like I don't want to live anymore like I can't take this. I can endure it. I wish God would just come take me, things we've all heard other people say. Maybe we've even felt those things in the past but his main thing is that he doesn't understand, he doesn't know what he did wrong and he wants an audience with God. And that's where we pick up and today we’ll read chapters 8 through 11.

Commentary:

Okay, so in our reading from 1 Corinthians today we’re watching Paul's training kick in, let's remember this is the apostle Paul and he is famous for being the apostle Paul, but he was Saul the Pharisee before he was the apostle Paul, so he had been trained and he was very zealous in his trait, like he was literally being devout and devoted to God through Judaism as a Pharisee, so when people came along and started saying Jesus is Lord, Jesus is equal to God, that's blasphemy he was raging about this until he met the resurrected Christ and that is the centerpiece of what Paul is talking about today. But, it's also the centerpiece of the apostles Paul of the apostle Paul's understanding and teachings. So basically, at the time of Paul, you had what was called the Sanhedrin, the high counsel, made up of scholars and people who determined what the law was, how to contextualize it in the changing world, and how to govern and teach the people and the Sanhedrin was made up of two different schools. The Sadducees and the Pharisees; the Sadducees, this is like old-school, like these are the people that are claiming they have been descended from the original priests and Levites, very, very traditional, very Orthodox, very conservative, very powerful mostly situated in the holy city of Jerusalem. Whereas the Pharisees were generally out and among the people. So, a lot closer to the ground, a lot closer to where people actually lived. They were in it with the people and these two groups, the Sadducees and the Pharisees had different views on specific theological understandings and one of them that is key. Very key to what we’re talking about right now was the hope of the resurrection from the dead. So, the Sadducees believed that when a person dies they return to God, their spirit returns to God and then their body is eventually no more, and there will be no resurrection from the dead, people will not rise up from the grave. The Pharisees, on the other hand, had the hope that there would be bodily resurrection from the dead, that they rested when they died, rested, in hope of resurrection that would certainly come one day. And we watched Paul, when he was arrested in Jerusalem back in the book of acts, actually go before the Sanhedrin and say I'm on trial because I have a hope in the resurrection from the dead, which divided the Council and had the Pharisees kind of on Paul's team. Paul hoped in resurrection, he could not get on board with these people who were following Jesus because they were saying Jesus is God. He's…that's blasphemy for him but then he had the experience where he encountered Jesus and Jesus spoke to him on the road to Damascus. That right there was a profound game changer in Paul's life and we could say yeah of course a blinding light from the heavens, in a voice and you fall down and you can't see in this voice tells you it's Jesus than you believe, but it's more than that because Jesus was dead, that's the thing Paul thought, He had been executed, He was dead and so these people that were following his teachings and believing in them, they needed to be wiped out so that you just disappear this…this heresy, would just disappear. But when he met Jesus, he met somebody who had risen from the dead, who had experienced resurrection. So, for him this made everything that he had hoped in true, he had seen it with his own eyes and it changed the whole game. Which is why in today's reading he’s essentially saying if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then known of this is true and everything that you believe when you believed in Jesus is false and there is no hope of the resurrection and we’re all wasting our times and it's hopeless. But then Paul says but he did, he did rise from the dead, and that has started something new which is directly at the heart of the gospel. At the heart of what is the good news that there is hope and it is eternal, that Christ's resurrection indicates that we who believe in Him will also experience resurrection, a resurrection or a rebirth into something completely new that God is doing upon the earth, essentially a new version of humanity, of which Jesus is the firstborn. So,  Paul says it like this, and I'm quoting from our reading today “just as death came into the world through a man, now the resurrection from the dead is begun through another man, just as everyone dies, because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life, but there is an order to this resurrection, Christ was raised as the first of the harvest, then all who belong to Christ will be raised when he comes back.” What's interesting, I mean we that's…that's fundamental Christianity, to believe these things, but if you have to step back and go, if I were in the Sanhedrin would I be a Sadducees or would I be a Pharisee because the hope of our faith is that we, those who have fallen asleep, those who have died physically will one day wake up and live again. And when we believe this is exactly what happens, spiritually, we die to who we were and are reborn, born again, resurrected into new life spiritually, where the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead indwells us, lives in us, it's no longer. We who live, but Christ who lives within us. So, let’s, I mean this is a kind of a theological thing that Paul is talking about when he’s talking about resurrection today but let's dwell upon it. Let’s meditate upon it. It is the fundamental thing in our faith that truly at a baseline, let’s just experience that everything is going to be okay, no matter what. We are in the hands of Christ Jesus and everything is going to be okay. No matter what. Forever. And so, let’s consider some of these bedrock things in our faith today.

Prayer:

And Holy Spirit, we invite You into that. We invite You to plant the words that we’ve read from Job and from 1 Corinthians, and from Psalms and from Proverbs today. Plant these things in our lives and our hearts and our minds that we may consider them, that they may transform us, that they may help us to see a reality that is very different than the world, a reality of how things are supposed to be and an invitation to be a part of that story come Holy Spirit we pray. And all this we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it’s the website, its where you find out what's going on around here and you can find out what's going on around here using the Daily Audio Bible app just like, just like the web there's a little drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner of the app screen and so yeah find the Community section that has links to different social media channels that we are participating on, Daily Audio Bible Women, Daily Audio Bible Friends, Daily Audio Bible, the different platforms like Instagram, Facebook, etc. etc. so you can find all those links in the Community section. Also, in the community section is the Prayer Wall and the Prayer Wall is…is something that is always happening. It's always on, you can always come and share your story and ask for prayer. You can always come and read stories and pray and reach out in the spirit and pray for people who are going through significant challenges. We are all facing something and so it's good to know we’re not alone in it, that we’re here to shoulder one another's burdens and be in the Lord's presence together on each other's behalf so the Prayer wall is for that. So, check that out. It's in the Community section as well.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at daily audio Bible.com there is a link on the homepage and I thank you, I thank you humbly for your partnership as we continue this journey through this year. If you're using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996 Springhill, Tennessee 37174.

And if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, the little red button up at the top or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today, I'm Brian, I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Prayer and Encouragements:

Hello DAB family this is Clyde from Michigan. Calling in to really, I guess it’s more to speak directly to Lazarus, brother I know where you’re at. I’ve been there at least twice in my life. Being a contractor and losing a business and going through a divorce and all the ugliness. All I can tell you is to keep, keep keeping on. Your message really rattled me, I think you can tell. I know where your heart is right now. I know how broken you are. And I can just say that Jesus will pull you through, he always does. It may not be on the level or in the timeframe that we want but know that you’re not alone. There are countless people right where you’re at, we will come through it, as you will. And I know that it’s hollow words sometimes to hear it from other people but know that you’re in our prayers and that we will never ever fall away. We’re all here to listen to you. So, please Lord Jesus look out for our brother Lazarus. Fill him with the hope that he is so desperately seeking. And bless him in Your name. Thank you Lord, Amen.

This is God’s Life Speaker. Lazarus, I hear you on the 18th of August and I will stand as the DAB family will stand in the gap. We will speak to those things that bind you and we pray in the name of Jesus that they are bound and cast and we will ask the Lord Jesus in only the way that he can to miraculously stand, provide and send you comfort. Is there a place we can reach out to you other than just speaking into this microphone? Please let us know. Thank you for your reliance on Jesus. Which in these kind of times doesn’t seem like it’s enough. But when you get to a place where you can look back it is just so amazing to see everywhere that His hand has been. Lord Jesus, we thank You for Lazarus, we thank You for his life because his story is a testimony. His life is a witness, I mean he lives it out, I mean he speaks it out. May You rush into this and may he feel You, may he be centered on You. May You surround him with many Christians, maybe even DABers he doesn’t even know it yet because we don’t know where he is. But Lord, You do. We trust You, we trust You Lord. And I pray that he’s obedient and trusting you and walking this out. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Hi Daily Audio Bible family, hi, my name’s Crystal. I just want to start off by saying thank you to everyone. Thank you to you all. Thank you to this community. Thank you, Brian and Jill, for your commitment and dedication to this…this wonderful platform and community that’s been created and feeding us in such a powerful way every single day. I’m so eternally grateful honestly and my children listen to it as well so, I just love it and I am so appreciative for it and I thank you as well community. You know how everyone prays for one another and shares and tells testimonies, this is a wonderful family to be apart of so thank you to you all. I’m recording this today and wanting to ask for prayer. Family, I’ve been struggling for the past 4-5 years with misusing alcohol and I’ve had some really really bad times with it. Some really, really dark times. I am, really desperate for change. I’m in fear of my health, my body physically scared that I’m really damaging myself. I’m a homeschooling mom. And so, I’m educating my children I have to children and I’m scared of what they’re seeing me do. I do do my best to hide it but I’m scared of what they’re seeing. I’m also, I’ve tried, I feel like I’ve tried everything. I may not have but I’m just asking guys if you could pray with me. Pray with me to stand strong. I’m gonna start seeing a counselor from next week. Please pray with me to be honest and open. Guys, I’m so desperate for courage and strength. Please pray for me. Thank you all, I’m praying with you too. Love you, bye.

Hey faith fam it’s Holly Heart calling in with more prayers. I’m gonna start with the most recent one because I feel it’s timely. Lazarus, dear Lord, please bless and keep Lazarus as he is in a season of loss. He’s feeling hopeless but he still sings Your praises Lord. Please lift up our brother and do not let him harm himself. Stuff is just that, stuff. So please help him put it into perspective. I know these times are hard for Christians and especially for Christian men Lord, please just sustain Lazarus and bring him back up out of his darkness. Little Lee, dear Lord, our sister is facing a giant obstacle in her marriage. Everything in our culture screams dump the cheater, you Lord, however, are in the business of forgiveness. Marriage is hard, divorce is hard. There’s no easy route for her, please make a path for her Lord. Let it lead to Your will. Rose, dear Lord, please help Rosie’s son Charles, forgive his past offenders so that he can be a beacon of Your love again, please show him eternal love and peace so he can reflect that. Quiet Confidence, dear Lord, please meet our sister where she is, she need Your strength and love. She's a prisoner to her own mind. Please Lord, deliver her from her bondage. LJ Lavender Dream, dear Lord, please help my sister and her chronic illness. You know what ails her Lord, please reach in her and fix her health. Also Lord, please watch over her son who is suicidal and speak to him and deliver him from these thoughts. Father, also encompass her extended family and bring healing and forgiveness, Amen.

Hey family, this is Maleesa from Albertville, Alabama. Brian and Jill, I love ya’ll so much and Ezekiel. Thank you Father for all you do for the body of Christ. I have a praise report, my daughter was married on July 16th. My oldest daughter, married in Paris France. We weren’t able to attend because of COVID restrictions and passport stuff, but praise God she's married. Dr. John, you’ve been praying for us for year. I want you to know I'm praying for you. God is able to heal your eye. I am lifting you up brother. And there was a sister who called and I didn’t catch your name I was at work but you said, at the end of your call you were singing It’s Me Oh Lord, standing in the, I’m sorry I’m tongue tied, I just want you to know I have been lifting you up sister, I’m so sorry you’re in so much pain. I love you. And GG hang in there. And the 16-year-old who called tell GG she could do it, she can do all things, she…you encouraged me. I just loved it all the young people, Renzo, everybody that calls in. Lady of Victory, I’m still praying for you, I love you sister. And the sister who lost her daughter, she was waiting ona liver, I didn’t catch your name but know that you’ve been prayed for. I don’t call in much but I’m praying much. I love this community. Ya’ll keep praying for each other. Look up, the King is coming. Ya’ll have a great day.

I have been struggling with a lot lately and I know that God is here for me and I know that I’m not alone. I just ask for everybody to pray for me and pray for my family. And for us to get through whatever we’re going through. I’m going through depression, heartbreak and family issues. And I’m trying so hard to stay strong. I know that me and my family are in God’s hand. And I know that He’s here for me and that He will help me. I just need to keep looking up to Him and keep having faith and I will. Tomorrow supposed to be my birthday. And I don’t really feel excited for it. But 18 years ago, I started fighting for my life. And I’m still fighting today. I just ask everybody that is listening to continue to pray for one another, to help one another and to be there for one another. And to keep your head up, to keep going no matter how hard things may get, God will always be the first one to listen to you. He will always be there when you need Him. Just keep praying, keep your head up and keep going. Love and God Bless you guys.

[dee6000]

A message on this current insanity by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò

A few days ago a lady, believing she appeared gifted with practical sense, said that it is necessary to submit to the use of the mask and social distancing not so much for their effectiveness, but to support our rulers in view of a relaxation of the measures adopted so far: “ If we put on the mask and get vaccinated, maybe they'll stop and let us live again, she commented. Faced with this observation, an elderly gentleman replied that some Jews, in Germany in the thirties, perhaps thought that wearing the Star of David sewn on his jacket would somehow satisfy Hitler's delusions, avoiding far worse violations and saving himself from deportation. Faced with this calm objection, her interlocutor was shaken, understanding the disturbing similarity between the Nazi dictatorship and the pandemic madness of our days; between the way in which tyranny could be imposed on millions of citizens by leveraging their fear, then as now. They have allowed themselves to be persuaded to obey, not to react to the violation of the rights of German citizens guilty only of being Jews, to inform themselves of the "criminals" in the civil authorities.And I ask myself: what difference exists between the denunciation of a neighbor who hides a Jewish family and the zealous reporting of those who receive acquaintances in violation of an unconstitutional provision that limits the freedoms of citizens? Are they not both respecting the law, observing the rules, while those same rules violate the rights of a part of the population, criminalized yesterday on a racial basis and today on a health basis? Have we learned nothing from the horrors of the past?while those same norms violate the rights of a part of the population, criminalized yesterday on a racial basis and today on a health basis? Have we learned nothing from the horrors of the past?while those same norms violate the rights of a part of the population, criminalized yesterday on a racial basis and today on a health basis? Have we learned nothing from the horrors of the past?

The voice of the Church invokes the divine Majesty to remove the " flagella tuae iracundiae, quae pro peccatis nostris meremur". These scourges have manifested themselves in the course of history with wars, plagues, famines; today they show themselves with the tyranny of globalism, capable of making more victims of a world conflict and of destroying national economies more than an earthquake. We must understand that if the Lord were to allow the supporters of the Covid emergency to be successful, it will certainly be for our greater good. Because today we are precluded, as if it were a fault, what little remained in our society that was still inspired by Christian civilization and that until yesterday we considered normal and taken for granted: exercise our fundamental freedoms, find ourselves praying in church, going out with friends , see us at dinner with our loved ones, be able to open the shop or restaurant and earn honestly, go to school or take a trip.

If this pseudo-pandemic is a scourge, it is not difficult to understand what are the sins for which Heaven punishes us: crimes, abortions, murders, divorces, violence, perversions, vices, thefts, deceptions, scams, betrayals, lies, desecrations. , cruelty. Public faults and faults of individuals. Sins of God's enemies and sins of His friends. The faults of the laity and the faults of the clerics, of the base and the top, of the governed and of the rulers, of the young and old, of men and women.

Those who believe that the violation of natural rights that we are undergoing has no supernatural significance, and that our share of responsibility is irrelevant in making ourselves complicit in what happens is wrong. Jesus Christ is Lord of History, and whoever would like to banish the Prince of Peace from the world He created and redeemed with His most precious Blood does not want to accept the inexorable defeat of Satan, the eternal loser. Thus, in a delirium that has all the traits of hubris , his servants move as if the victory of evil is now certain, while in reality it is necessarily ephemeral and momentary. The nemesisthat he prepares for them will remind us of the people of Israel after the crossing of the Red Sea, and that Pharaoh could have done nothing if it had not been permitted by God.

The Christian Easter, the true Easter of which that of the Old Testament was only a figure, takes place on Golgotha, on the blessed wood of the Cross. Of that perfect Sacrifice Christ was the Altar, Priest and Victim. L ' Agnus Dei , held up by the Precursor on the banks of the Jordan, took upon Himself the sins of the world, to offer themselves as human and divine victim to the Father, in His Blood restoring the order violated by our Progenitor. It is there, on Calvary, that the true Great Reset took place , thanks to which the inextinguishable debt of the sons of Adam was canceled by the infinite merits of the Passion of the Redeemer, redeeming us from the slavery of sin and death.

Without repenting of our sins, without the intention of modifying our life and conforming it to the will of God, we cannot hope that the consequences of our sins, which offend the divine Majesty and can be appeased only by penance, will disappear. Our Lord showed us the royal way of the Cross: " Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example to follow in his footsteps " (1 Peter 2:21). Let us each take up our cross, denying ourselves and following the divine Master. Let us approach Holy Easter with the awareness of always being under the gaze of the Lord: "You wandered like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls“ (1 Peter 2:25). And let us remember that in the dies irae We will certainly all have him as Judge, but thanks to Baptism we have deserved the right to recognize him as a Brother and Friend.

We ask the Supreme Judge, in the words of Sacred Scripture: " Discerne causam meam de gente non sancta, ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me ". To the Merciful Father, who in His divine Son has made us heirs of eternal glory, we humbly address David's words: " Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea, et a sin meo munda me ". We ask the Consoler Spirit: " Da virtutis meritum, da salutis exitum, da perenne gaudium ".

If we really want this so-called pandemic to collapse like a house of cards - as it always happened for far worse scourges, when the Lord decreed its end - let us remember to recognize him, and him alone, that universal Lordship that we usurp with every sin. , refusing to obey His holy Law and thus making us Satan's slaves. If we want the peace of Christ, it is Christ who must reign, and it is His kingdom that we must want, starting with ourselves, with our family, with our circle of friends and acquaintances, with our religious community. Adveniat regnum tuum . If, on the other hand, we allow the hateful tyranny of sin and rebellion against Christ to establish itself, the madness of Covid will only be the beginning of hell on earth.

Let us therefore prepare Confession and Easter Communion with this spirit of reparation and atonement, both for our sins and for those of our brothers, men of the Church and our rulers. The true and holy "new renaissance" to which we must aspire must be the life of Grace, the friendship of God, assiduity with His Most Holy Mother and with the Saints. The true " nothing will be the same as before " we must say by rising from the confessional with the intention of sinning no more, offering the Eucharistic King our heart as a throne in which he delights in dwelling, consecrating our every action, our every thought, our every breath.

May these be our wishes for the next Easter of Resurrection, under the benign gaze of Our Queen and Lady, Co-redemptrix and Mediatrix of all Graces.

+Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop

[sincerelymari]

                                       Freedom of religion

Ability to seek the truth about God and live according to our beliefs has been an essential from the beginning of our existence. To choose the right belief for ourselves is basic human right. In other words, its called religious freedom which gives our lives dignity and meaning and enables us to think, act upon and express what we deeply believe. Religious freedom is like the architecture that allows diverse faiths to coexist, it is the right to live our moral convictions freely in public and with room to flourish.

Despite of what was mentioned above, different religions and believers have different point of view. While someone believes that it is right for everyone to express, some will may think that it’s inappropriate. For example, Ketevan Meparishvili who is Christian says that she would never harm anyone because of his or her religion, however, if there is some issue they do not agree then she just won’t support them. ‘’Let’s take baptism that supports LGBT people and me an orthodox Christian for whom It Is unacceptable. While thinking that, I know that this difference is ideological and I have no right nor will to harm anyone.’’

While talking about religious freedom, we have to mention Atheist as well. Concerns around them are mostly stereotypical and dogmatic. From Nikoloz Saralashvili’s point of view Atheist often get mistreated because of their choice and the way of thinking. He says that people often associate atheist activism and activist with tearing things down and trying to remove religion from society in certain ways or tell people why they are wrong, ‘’but in reality they are all people who have joys, loves and passions. Even for me, not believing in god was such a sea change of worldview that it literally changed my life fundamentally. Some people have this idea that atheist must be nihilists who have no purpose but it is ridiculous. It’s just I feel more liberated and that is amazing. We just don’t need god to explain what a great place we are living in and that is all.’’

David, age 23, who is catholic explains how he knows the religion in which he was raised is right for him. ‘’Even after the confirmation I still thought about it, ‘’what about other religions? Are they fake? Why do I think that this one faith is real?’’ and basically, to me, I just get a feeling. I know it’s hard to explain but I just go to church and see the cross and it feels right, I feel presence of god in that place. Despite of that I truly believe that there are a lot of people who feel that their religion, whether it be Islam or Buddhism, is right for them. And I do not see anything wrong with that.

Mama Basili, who is Orthodox priest explains that freedom is the power, rooted in reasons and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on is one’s own responsibility. he thinks that by free will one shapes one’s life. ‘’Same goes in belief’’-says Basili. ‘’In Christianity the most important thing that Jesus Christ wanted us to learn is love of human beings and how can I disagree with that?’’ We have to love each other despite of their religion, I won’t may say that faith of other religions is right but freedom of choice is something we have to respect.’’

‘’Religious consciousness is represented by faith and faith is stimulated by emotion and posits the subject which will satisfy the needs of the inner life’’- Says psychologist Mariam Tchanturia who also explains that religion is something that refers to man’s faith in a power beyond himself whereby he seeks to satisfy emotional needs and gain stability of life. Regarding to human identity and religion Mariami says that humans mind is easily convinced to do and believe things when it is young and fragile. For example, most people choose their religion based on the religion their parent practiced. On itself religion could effects many aspects of our lives depending on how deeply we believe in it; this includes the way we see others, the way we act, and the way we influence those around us. ‘’Our faith in our religion can always be seen in the way we live our lives, nevertheless it does not define who we are. What makes us who we are is our interpretation of it, and choices we make through them.’’

[d33-alex]

Philosophy And The Crisis Of The Modern World

To find a way out of the current confusions and rifts in modern Western societies, and for its various countries to regain workable cultural identities, a necessary, but not sufficient condition would be to have an allegiance to a divine conception of reality. This allegiance is not sufficient because cultures need to foster traditions and modes of living peculiar to them. Traditions stem from trial and error and will reflect the character of the people and the physical and man-made environment out of which they arise. These ethnic and cultural differences give rise to the cultural diversity liberals claim so much to love. However, modern liberalism is instead dedicated to stifling and eradicating differences and to thrusting often incompatible cultures together. Their modes of living and approaches to life may or may not be congenial.

Some liberal commentators can be found pointing out the difficulty that, for instance, the Irish and the Italians had initially in getting along in nineteenth century America, but how after much strife, they learned to live together. Two things should be noted here; one is that this conflict occurred between traditionally Catholic and European cultures. Imagine how much more difficult it would have been if they were more distantly related. Another is that putting even these two cultures together caused conflict and that the conflict was resolved by establishing a new culture that incorporated both in a common culture. This is not an argument in favor of multiculturalism. But to question multiculturalism at this point in time is to be regarded as “far right;” and thus as an extremist.

The multicultural ideal person seems to be the rootless cosmopolitan, as happy in New York City as in London, Paris or Berlin, with no firm attachments to anywhere in particular. René Girard points out in The One By Whom Scandal Comes that anyone who does not evince a particular preference and loyalty to his own family, his own culture, has historically been deemed a threat to the continued existence of that family, that culture. If a person is as fond of another culture as his own then there is nothing to stop his abandonment of that culture in a time of crisis or any other; nor does he have a reason to work towards cultural self-preservation. In fact, the uniquely Western and liberal phenomenon of “ethnomasochism” takes the point of view of those with a grievance against the West, sometimes justified, and ignores the virtues that any culture is bound to have. Why preserve a culture if it is evil?

Liberalism is the dominant ideology of the mainstream media, academia and the ruling elite of perhaps all Western cultures. It has its roots at least partly in the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment period tended to reject tradition and intuition as meaningful modes of interacting with reality. It emphasized human reason as the means to progress and progress was to be achieved by an overweening rationalism and a suspicion and rejection of both the prerational; tradition, and the suprarational; the religious. Liberal theists do exist, but they are typically despised by their fellow liberals as retrograde and backward. Theism is fundamentally incompatible with the exclusively science-embracing perspective of the ideology of liberalism.

Ideas have consequences. Arguably, a precondition of having a workable, functioning and non-nihilistic culture rooted in a particular time and place, incorporating “a people” with some functioning identity, room must be found for the transcendent. No culture has ever been created without religious roots. Logically, this could be a historical accident. Or, more likely, it is because a conception of a divine aspect of reality is necessary to avoid nihilism. In The Crisis of the Modern World, published in 1927, René Guenon blames the emergence of philosophy among the Greeks for all that has gone wrong in the Western world. To a devotee of philosophy, particularly Platonic philosophy, this is a rather alarming assertion.

 René Guenon notes that philosophy is the love of wisdom. As such it is “a preliminary and preparatory stage, a step as it were in the direction of wisdom.” It is not wisdom itself. “The perversion that ensued consisted in taking this transitional stage for an end in itself and in seeking to substitute ‘philosophy’ for wisdom, a process which implied forgetting or ignoring the true nature of the latter.”

Guenon’s objection is not to philosophy per se, but to a philosophy denuded of esoteric content. At the heart of Plato’s philosophy is the Form of the Good – God, the Source. The Form of the Good is clearly the object of mystical revelation and it gives all reality a divine quality. Thus, reality is being generated by God and it shares in God’s divine nature. Wisdom must be grounded in reality. Rational philosophical reflection must be centered around the real. If the divine is absented from philosophical speculation, then a vacuum is created. This vacuum can only be filled with malignant creations of the human imagination. They will be malignant because false and misleading – “a pretended wisdom that is purely human and therefore entirely of the rational order.” Reality is “true, traditional, supra-rational.”

Another and popular alternative is to take a fragment of the true Good and to represent it as the whole. A single virtue, like compassion, agape, becomes an evil monstrosity by shoving out of view all other excellences. Compassion is acceptance, but true love includes Eros, the push to develop, to gain wisdom, to seek salvation. For that, effort is required. If agape is lacking eros, compassion is lost because truly caring for someone and wishing that person the best means to care about his development. In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis reserves the word “ideology” for the practice of taking a fragment of the Tao and enlarging it in this way, to the exclusion of all other considerations. Hence, communism is an ideology but the Christian religion is not. Liberal opponents of this view tend to try to apply the label “ideology” to religion but in doing this, they miss the point. They want to claim that religion is an ideology like any other. The advantage of the fragment enlarging technique for the ideologue is that he appears to have a hold of the truth. However, a partial truth becomes a big lie in this context.

Plato, on the other hand, is no ideologue. He examines the role of different aspects of the Good in different dialogs. His devotion is to The Form of the Good and this Form is supra-rational and not something that can be fully explicated rationally. It is not the product of mind and rationality. In fact, it produces the lower levels of mind, soul and body. Using the Neo-Platonist Plotinus’ nomenclature, of mind/psyche, soul/nous, spirit/the One, then a visual representation might look something like this.

Plato never doubts The Form of the Good, but he sometimes wonders about his ability to write sensibly and well about it. He is aware of the limitations of discourse and never considers it a substitute for mystical experience. Hence, he narrates a story, a “myth,” like the Timaeus, and in contexts like that he sometimes writes “something like this must be true.” Plato also appears to worry in the Meno that virtue may be unteachable and not fully definable. The character of Socrates suggests that it is better to try to do so, than to give up. In being self-aware about the distance between exoteric and the esoteric, Plato’s philosophy has the quality of a parable in the manner of Jesus, Christ’s way of communicating with the uninitiated.

Thus, the core of Plato’s philosophy is a religious experience. He worries that in writing about it he may misrepresent it and makes the reader aware of his misgivings and the approximate and provisional nature of all attempts to describe and explicate this religious core. This means all Plato’s writings, like all good philosophy, are theology. Platonic exoteric philosophy forever circles round the supra-rational. The Phaedrus and the Symposium have a quality of glorifying the divine and are also inspirational.

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is a useful starting point for all attempts to understand Platonic philosophy. Everything Plato writes presupposes such a vision of reality. Plato has a place for rationality, but he at no point tries to deduce morality from merely rational considerations. The love of goodness and justness that is visible in the character of Socrates in The Gorgias is of a piece with Plato’s raptures expressed in describing the experience of the Form of the Good in Book VII of The Republic. The moral faith and beauty of Socrates in this dialog is inspiring, in stark contrast with the evil and self-serving nature of Gorgias, Polus and Callicles; with each interlocutor becoming progressively more brazenly horrible. In dialogs like this one, Socrates becomes a vehicle for the Form of the Good and the divine light shines through him, making him the most admirable of men for Plato.

Real philosophy is the explication of the supra-rational. What is the goal of life, having been projected into a physical universe by an ineffable Source? Socrates the man wanted to forget about the origins of the universe and focus on ethics. However, Plato saw that ethics without an appreciation of the divine origins of life is meaningless and a hopeless task. God is the alpha and the omega; the origin and destination. Rationalism, on the other hand, loses its way.

Stoic and Epicurean philosophy represent the beginning of the rot. Guenon notes that “the appearance of skepticism on the one hand, and of Stoic and Epicurean moralism on the other, are sufficient to show to what point intellectuality had declined.” They share some of the ethical insights of Platonic philosophy but jettison God. The point and purpose of human life is largely lost. They are like a too thin papier mâché shell constructed over a balloon. The balloon bursts and the shell remains temporarily intact before collapsing without the inner core that made it possible.

Once the supra-rational is abandoned and rejected there is nothing to philosophize about. God, as the First Cause, itself a logical necessity, may be able to create ex nihilo but philosophers cannot. Rational thought is not creative; it is analytic. William Blake wrote “Man by his reasoning power can only compare and judge of what he has already perceived.” The rationalist philosopher seeks to establish by theory that which only exists in experience and faith.

Exoteric philosophy abandons esoteric mysteries and insights and tries to conjure the world from the intellect of the philosopher. The rational philosophical mind spins its wheels on nothing; it grinds thin air trying to make bread and substance. It finds its task hopeless and despairs; the despair of skepticism and nihilism. Positivism, nihilism. Post-modernism, nihilism. Diversity, nihilism. Liberalism, nihilism. Humanism, nihilism. Every door closes, shutting itself in the face of the increasingly desperate or perhaps apathetic searcher.

Roger Scruton shares Iris Murdoch’s view that a thorough going and straight-forward belief in God is now impossible. Murdoch thinks it is a pity and so does Scruton. Scruton looks to art and music to provide a kind of God substitute. In his book on beauty, Scruton rejects the notion that the experience of beauty is a view of the face of God; where the divine light shines through.

By contrast, the religious mystic and Platonist, Plotinus asks the fascinating question – why do we like beautiful things? What attracts us, calls us, lures us, and fills us with joy about beautiful objects? The answer is not obvious. Like Plato, Plotinus recognizes that beauties of character, noble conduct, experience of the supra-rational far outshine mere physical beauty.

Plotinus writes that soul recognizes a kinship to the beautiful and this attracts it. Soul is a divine thing and a fragment of Primal Beauty. The Good is desired by every soul and is beautiful. “Each in the solitude of himself shall behold that solitary-dwelling the pure, unmingled, for which all live, act and know, all things depend, the Source of life, intellection, being.” The Beauty supreme, fashions its lovers to beauty and makes them also worthy of love. The Fatherland to us is There whence we have come, and There is The Father. Withdraw into your soul and look and if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as the creator of a sculptor does and keep chiseling until “god-like splendor of virtue shines forth.” The more beautiful the soul is, the clearer its vision of First Beauty. Beauty in the realm of ideas constitutes the beauty of the intellectual sphere. The Good lies beyond that and is the Fountain and Principle of Beauty. Plotinus’ writings about beauty are themselves beautiful.

Scruton writes scathingly about theology. He compares it to academic feminists; taking the line that to prescribe conclusions is to forgo research. For instance, feminists set out to explain, catalog and remedy the “oppression of women,” never doubting for a second that this oppression is taking place. In fact, it is impermissible to question this supposed truth.

The appropriate rejoinder to this criticism would seem to be that the problem with feminism is that it is wrong and misguided. But is this what should be said about Plato’s theology? Since Plato’s theology centers around a mystical experience, it is not something that can be considered to be the end product of a chain of reasoning, or the conclusion of an argument. The Form of the Good is not the result of speculative philosophy – it is what makes meaningful speculative philosophy possible.

Similarly, if the existence of the world is thought to be the end product of philosophical speculation, the ontological order has been reversed. The world exists. The world gives rise to humans. Humans then wonder about this world. Humans did not first exist and bring about the existence of the world by conjecture. Our inability to conjecture the world, God, goodness and beauty into existence is not a sign of philosophical corruption or bad faith.

Scruton has assumed a vacuum where there should be a God. This starting assumption is not more legitimate than the theologian’s. The intuition and experience of God’s existence did not come from philosophical argument. If Scruton is incapable of religious experience, he can rely on faith and hope like the rest of us. He clearly exhibits these two things and yet he still rejects theology.

Theology does not mean the end of philosophical thinking. It is the only form of philosophical thinking that does not ultimately end in or imply nihilism. In the end can be found the beginning and in the beginning, the end. All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, writes Tolstoy in Anna Karenina. Yet philosophies without God are only superficially different. If a philosophy starts with nothing, it will end with nothing. God is the Alpha and the Omega or Nothing is the beginning and the end. Of course, much of what is officially called theology is atheistic and unenlightening.

Tibetan monks spend half the day meditating – purifying the soul to make itself at home in the Beauty and Goodness from whence it came; aligning the soul with reality – and the other half disputing with the other monks as to the meaning of what they have experienced. Having agreed that God exists, it is still necessary to discover how to live and how to integrate religious experience into everyday life. Philosophy does not end when it becomes properly theological.

In The Sacred and the Secular, Scruton takes Feuerbach’s view that God is a projection of human qualities onto a nonexistent divine. Talk of God is strictly metaphorical. It is of a piece with myth which is really about the human condition; not about God at all. Scruton writes approvingly of nineteenth century writers who “had rejected various metaphysical ideas and doctrines, but still inhabited the world that faith had made – the world of secure commitments, of marriage and love, of obsequies and Christenings, of real presences in ordinary lives and exalted visions in art.” However, without the metaphysical underpinnings, nothing can sustain those remnants of faith, as can be observed in the modern world around us. By replacing God’s love with a purely human love, human love loses its aspirational character. Instead of divine love shining through Socrates’ goodness, humans are to be the source of that love. Is our task to get out of the way of the divine transmission of love or to be its creators? The first is to properly orient ourselves in relation to reality. The second is to assume the role of God; not being a vehicle but the Source.

There is a reason that once a notion of the transcendent is lost, human life becomes more or less unbearable. As Scruton notes, often various “causes” are adopted, like PETA, that have an emotionally functional equivalence to religious devotion. Humans abhor meaninglessness and all sorts of pathologies are promoted in the absence of the divine. Rejecting religious experience, many modern philosophers are materialists and embrace scientism. Denying the existence of the invisible features of reality, and focusing on what can be quantified, E. F. Schumacher comments that such a person “lives in a very poor world, so poor that he will experience it as a meaningless wasteland unfit for human habitation. Equally, if he sees it as nothing but an accidental collocation of atoms, he must needs agree with Bertrand Russell that the only rational attitude is one of unyielding despair.”

Schumacher points out that the idea of a Levels of Being is a recurrent conception in human cultures. He identifies them as mineral, plant, animal, human – correlated with the physical, life, consciousness and self-awareness. A low Level of Being means focusing on the body and biological needs while living at a higher level involves fulfilling human potential and a richer life.

The game of modern philosophy, involving the useless spinning wheels of the rationalistic philosopher, continues by violating one of Goedel’s assertions, namely that axiomatic systems can be consistent and incomplete, or inconsistent and complete, but never consistent and complete. This last would enable philosophers to self-generate the aboutness missing from their philosophy; unfortunately for them, it is a proven impossibility. Analytic philosophers, post-moderns and all the others continue to “think” or at least write by opting for “inconsistent and complete.” This possibility is rejected by Goedel because the reason that an inconsistent axiomatic system can be complete is because contradictions, if taken to be true, can be used to prove anything. This “anything” includes false things. Truly rational human beings do not want to be able to prove that false things are true.

Perhaps this fact is yet another reason why many analytic philosophers can abide the contradictions of determinism, because they need contradictions in order for the utter vacuousness of their theories to remain hidden. They want skepticism about almost everything except the existence of physical reality, although their philosophy makes no such thing possible, and then make desultory attempts to generate things like morality from it even though justice is an abstract concept, the reality of which cannot be derived from the physical level. In trying to derive morality from biology, for instance, it is possible to show that morality is useful, but not that it is true.

The things that we really care about and that make life worth living are invisible: love, friendship, nonphysical beauty, meaning, purpose, morality, fun, joy and value. Relying on a scientific approach means focusing on externals, surfaces, the superficial. If the human race were to encounter aliens, there would be some minor interest in the aliens’ height, weight, appearance, etc.. But the real interest would be their thoughts and dreams. Conversation with them, reading their literature, listening to their music and discovering their spiritual ideas would be of most importance. It would be supremely disappointing if an investigator returned from his encounter with aliens having forgotten to include any of these factors in his inquiries. The inquirer could be assessed as incompetent and perhaps even mentally challenged. The same holds of course for all similar inquiries into the human condition.

Roger Scruton argues that “science can have all the answers only if it has all the questions: and that assumption is false.” Schumacher identifies some of the missing questions and notes the effect of ignoring them. These include inquiring about the meaning and purpose of human life and the nature of good and evil. A culture that stops asking these questions is unsustainable – “man cannot live by bread alone.”

The character Sergey Ivanovitch in Anna Karenina notes that classical learning can counter the nihilistic tendencies inherent in an exclusive focus on science; “little pills of classical learning possess the medicinal property of anti-nihilism.” A classical education could have this effect partly because, as Guenon points out, things had not at that point descended to the current extremes. Mystery cults and esoteric philosophy still exerted an influence on exoteric thought.

Schumacher notes that those of us who still see the value of a science of understanding nonetheless are affected by the hypnotic pull of the exclusively scientific view. After all, for most Western people, this view underpinned nearly all of their formal education. The power of social conformism draws people in like a black hole in the center of what was once a living culture. Faith, instead of being a guide to understanding higher levels, is seen as being in opposition to the intellect. Since science excludes anything “higher” than itself, it can give the appearance of confirming that there are no such higher levels. At worst a person “may lose the courage as well as the inclination to consult the ‘wisdom tradition of mankind’ and to profit from it.”

Science has garnered a near-total monopoly on prestige. The science of manipulation offers to solve our problems. It is imagined that a technological fix can be found for the problems that confront us. However, many societal problems are grounded in morality, culture and an impoverished idea of the purpose of human existence. Wealth may accumulate as the quality of life declines.

The science of manipulation has a pragmatic quality. Pursuing a degree in English or philosophy tends to elicit the question “what are you going to do with that?” It would be nice if the answer were to preserve our wisdom traditions and to appreciate and transmit our grand cultural inheritance. However, for most philosophers, “wisdom” is regarded as a defunct and outdated concept and English tends to center around “gender, class and race” and thus to be a feeble arm of a lost and misguided politics – Scruton’s “culture of repudiation” among other things. In this way, English tries to demonstrate its “usefulness,” but it does so by gutting itself of content and an appreciation of high art and replacing it with the pursuit of “equality.” If all the “smart” people abandon the spiritual quest; if they do not develop their abilities towards the science of understanding, evidence of wisdom will increasingly only exist in the past.

There is plenty of evidence that the ability to think coherently and constructively about invisibles is diminishing. The confusion surrounding moral values is astounding. American society has gone from the equality of opportunity to the equality of result. It does no good to point out the incoherence of legislating results. Failure is taken to be synonymous with oppression and with oppression there logically needs to be an oppressor. This leads to the lynch-mob mentality of, for instance, post-colonial studies. Only criticism, but never praise, of the oppressing culture is countenanced. The failure of many former colonies to emulate the success of the colonizers is attributed to their past oppression. The fallacy is to imagine that without, say, French atrocities in the Congo, the Congo would now be a thriving, developed, economically sound, well-educated, peaceful, relatively corruption-free society. Their legal system would rival the best in the world. Their education system would be second-to-none. The fact that many countries that have never been colonized have failed to thrive in this manner is ignored.

It is possible to try to make so-called transcendental arguments. These start with the experience of, for instance, freedom, and try to outline the metaphysical realities that make freedom possible. Transcendental arguments show how the exoteric relies on the esoteric. But to do so, they rely on the full reality of ordinary experience. Positivists and the like, simply deny this reality. The rejection of esoteric realities ends up with the rejection of exoteric realities, until, in the philosophy of John Locke and Galileo, ordinary subjective experience is banished from reality. Only the measurable and quantifiable are held to exist.

 In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky bravely and interestingly does not directly answer the philosophical arguments of The Grand Inquisitor made in Ivan’s allegory. Instead, the allegory is immediately followed by a conversion story. Father Zossima’s brother Markel is the recipient of mystical insight; an esoteric revelation. Markel had been under the influence of a militant politicized atheist and made fun of things religious. However, as Markel learns he is dying at the age of seventeen, he comes to have sympathy for his mother and his old nurse. He makes concessions to their religiosity and in doing so begins a process of transformation which has much to do with his newfound empathy which is partly inspired by their overt sorrow.

Markel’s insights flummox his relatives and his doctor who declares the disease Markel is suffering from has literally gone to his head. It seems to be partly that in coming close to death, the beauty and goodness of life becomes apparent. Markel tells his mother not to cry; “life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we won’t see it; if we would, we should have heaven on earth the next day.” He declares that the fact he is soon going to die is irrelevant in this regard. One day is enough to know all happiness. We quarrel, compete and keep grudges, when we should go “straight into the garden, walk and play there, love, appreciate, and kiss each other, and glorify life.” Markel even asks forgiveness from the birds because “there was such a glory of God all about me: birds, trees, meadows, sky; only I lived in shame and dishonored it all and did not notice the beauty and glory.”

Some intuitive appreciation of such suprarationally inspired notions is possible – arguably in the form of Plato’s anamnesis – an awakening of what the soul already knows, without undergoing Markel’s spiritual transformation. The beauty of photographs, paintings, music and poetry is often undeniable and presents a refutation to the notion that the science of manipulation spans the gamut of existence. Beautiful pictures of people reading, among others, also point to the inner dimension of life that opens, ultimately, onto God. Positivism is like coming to the entrance of an intriguing and beautiful home, but never knocking and entering.

   By Richard Cocks – faculty member of the Philosophy Department at SUNY Oswego. Dr. Cocks is an editor and regular contributor at the Orthosphere and has been published at The Brussels Journal, The Sydney Traditionalist Forum, People of Shambhala, The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and the University Bookman.

[standtoreason93]

Faithfulness Is Not Theologically Complicated

By Greg Koukl

Lately I have been mystified by—and distressed with—a trend I’ve seen with many who identify as Christians yet seem to effortlessly embrace secular ideas completely at odds with a biblical understanding of reality.

These more “progressive” Christians tend to be pluralistic regarding salvation,[i] sexually active as single persons, gay friendly (and here I do not mean appropriately friendly with gays, but rather supportive of “alternative sexualities”), comfortable with “gender fluidity,” in favor of same-sex marriage, and pro-choice.[ii]

I’m distressed because they have fallen into a trap Paul warned about: “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men…rather than according to Christ” (Col. 2:8).

I’m mystified because there’s no good reason for faltering in the face of these particular trends because Scripture speaks with clarity against them. Since there is no biblical ambiguity on any of these issues, there is no real cause for a Christian’s confusion.

Simply put, on a host of culturally charged moral and spiritual issues, faithfulness is not theologically complicated. Why, then, are many who claim to be Christians foundering on fundamentals with such regularity? I think there are two reasons.

First, it’s clear that many Christians are untutored in the basics. To them, Christianity is simply about believing in Jesus in some vague sense and loving people in a can’t-we-all-just-get-along kind of way. That’s where their theology begins, and that’s where it ends.

Second, many Christians—especially among the younger generation, sadly—seem to care more about what their friends think about them than what Jesus thinks about them. Each of these failings is dangerous on its own; in combination, they are spiritually deadly.

I will not, here, parse out clever ways to persuade outsiders of God’s point of view on these issues. Rather, I want Christians to see the simple biblical facts for themselves. Maybe clarity will lessen the confusion and breed the courage needed to face the cultural pressures.

Salvation

First things first. That trust in Jesus of Nazareth is necessary to escape eternal punishment for sin is arguably the most offensive detail of classical Christian theology. Peter called it “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense” (1 Pet. 2:8). Yet it is also gospel bedrock.[iii]

To stand with Jesus on this issue invites a tsunami of scorn and abuse in our culture. It is the first claim jettisoned when Christians itch to become more “tolerant” and substitute a Christianity of worldly love, acceptance, and inclusion for the gospel of rescue from wrath. To side with the crowd on this, though, is spiritual treason.

The disciples did not choose the name “Christians” for themselves. Others did. Followers of Jesus described themselves simply as “the Way” (Acts 9:2). The reason was clear. That was how Jesus described Himself: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6). Lest anyone be tempted to read ambiguity into that statement at the end of Jesus’ ministry, take counsel from this one at the very beginning:

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matt. 7:13–14)

Controversial? Yes. Confusing? No. The claim is clear. New Testament writers repeated it constantly in a variety of ways, offering nine lines of argument to solidify their point.[iv]

Jesus is the world’s only source of salvation:“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Jesus is the Father’s choice: “Jesus…said to them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent’” (John 6:29).

Thus, rejection of Jesus is rejection of the Father Himself: “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him” (John 5:23b).

Rejecting Jesus brings wrath; believing in Jesus rescues from wrath: “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (John 3:36).

Jesus alone provides forgiveness of sin:“Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins”(John 8:24).

Many impostors will claim to provide other ways of salvation: “See to it that no one misleads you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will mislead many” (Matt. 24:4–5).

But there are no alternatives: “There is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

Jesus will be man’s final judge: “Christ Jesus…is to judge the living and the dead” (2 Tim. 4:1).

Therefore, all nations are to be given this gospel: “Repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations” (Luke 24:47).

There is only one answer to the Philippian jailer’s question, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul gave it: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:30–31). Simple and straightforward, uncomplicated and unambiguous. Do not be confused.

Abortion

I realize, of course, that Scripture does not address abortion directly. Rather, the issue is subsumed under a broader biblical injunction. The sixth commandment says simply, “You shall not murder” (Ex. 20:13). It mirrors a directive going back almost to the beginning that is itself grounded in a truth in the very first chapter of the Bible.

After the flood, God told Noah, “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man” (Gen. 9:6). Twice in Genesis 1, God declares that humans bear His image. Because human beings bear God’s image, any destruction of a human being deserves the severest penalty.

Here is the question: Are unborn human beings image-bearers in the same sense God is referring to in Genesis? Are they protected under the sixth commandment, thus making abortion an act of de facto homicide? Are the preborn the same kind of living beings as those who have already been born? Put another way, in God’s eyes, are humans before birth the very same valuable individualsthey are after they are born?

It does no good, by the way, to dismiss the value of preborn humans by labeling them “fetuses,” or “zygotes,” or “blobs of cells.” First, you and I are also “blobs of cells” after a fashion. Second, like the word “adolescent,” the other terms are purely human inventions marking stages of biological development. Embryology—and common sense—tells us that the very same individual is present at each stage, regardless of the arbitrary terms we use to distinguish the stages.

Some will be surprised to know that Scripture itself gives a definitive answer to our question above in a passage that is clear, unambiguous, and decisive. Luke 1 records a remarkable exchange between Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, John the Baptist’s mother, almost immediately after Mary conceives Jesus by the Holy Spirit.

When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she cried out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And how has it happened to me, that the mother of my Lord would come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy.” (Luke 1:41–44)

Note, this meeting took place when Martha was in her late second trimester with John, and Mary was in her early first trimester with Jesus. Recall also that earlier in the chapter we learned that John himself would be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother’s womb (Luke 1:15), and this passage marks the prophecy’s fulfillment. Clearly, John the “fetus”—filled with the Holy Spirit—leaped with joy in the presence of the “zygote,” Jesus the Lord.

So here is our question again, now applied specifically to the prophet and the Savior: Were John the Baptist and Jesus their same selves before they were born as they were after they were born? Clearly the biblical answer is, “Yes.” Had Mary or Elizabeth chosen abortion, then, they would have killed Jesus and John—not a potential or possible or future Jesus and John, but Jesus and John themselves.

The sixth commandment forbids murder. Murder is the willful killing of an innocent human being, an individual made in the image of God. Does abortion do this? According to what we learn in the Bible, yes, it does. Abortion, then—in God’s eyes—is murder. No Christian should condone it. No Christian should participate in it. Every Christian should condemn it.[v]

Having a baby under any circumstances is a challenge, but especially so when the pregnancy is unplanned or the result of a traumatic experience. Even so, these complications do not change the basic biblical calculus. Abortion violates the sixth commandment.

Do not be confused. This is not a complex issue, theologically.

Gender

There is one thing everyone knows about the world. They know something is wrong, that things are not the way they are supposed to be. The world is broken, and multitudes suffer as a result.

There was a time, though, when this was not so. Genesis tells us about that time. It is the book of beginnings, the introduction to the story of reality. It tells us the way the world was when God first made it, when “all that He had made…was very good” (1:31). It tells us the way the world is supposed to be, the way it was before the evil.

Here is what the book of beginnings tells us about the beginning of human beings:

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it….” (Gen. 1:27–28)

I have already mentioned the importance of the image of God in man. It’s the source of our innate and intrinsic value, the source of our inherent dignity and nobility. I want you to notice something else about the good, dignified, noble way God made humans.

From the very beginning, human beings have been either male or female, one or the other. In God’s world, sex is binary. There are rare physical exceptions,[vi] but that is not the way things are supposed to be. The exceptions are part of the brokenness.

Notice also that in God’s order there is no hint of distinction between the sex a person is on the outside and the sex a person thinks he is on the inside. Humans were created to be unified, whole persons—the mind matching the body.

At the moment, though, this point is controversial. Some think there is no vital connection between the sex a person is physically and their mental perception of their sex (often referred to as “gender”). And, indeed, there is a miniscule percent of people who are genuinely conflicted, thinking their own gender is different from their sex.[vii]But that is also part of the brokenness. It clearly is not God’s good plan.

There is a reason God made two physical sexes with their matching genders. In God’s plan, men and women were made both physically and emotionally different from each other in order to fit together in a complementary way. As counterparts sexually and soulishly, they were created so the woman could be what God called a “suitable helpmate” to man (Gen. 2:18–25). Even after the evil came and the world was broken, this plan did not change. Indeed, without this physical and emotional fit, it would not be possible for men and women to fulfill God’s command to multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it together.

Scripture is not ambiguous or unclear on this issue, which is why no one, Christian or otherwise, has been confused on it for thousands of years—until recently. Gender is not “fluid” in the way some have made it out to be. That is not how God made human beings.

Binary sexuality is also key to understanding God’s purpose for something else the culture has been confused about.

Marriage

When Jesus was asked about the legitimacy of divorce, He answered by going back to the beginning.

Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? (Matt. 19:4–5)

According to Jesus, then, marriage is not a cultural convention based on current custom and sexual whim. Instead, marriage is tied to God’s creation order. Here is His formula for marriage: one man, with one woman, becoming one flesh, for one lifetime.

Notice Jesus' implicit support of binary gender in His reference to Genesis 2:24: a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife. The kind of marriage God had in mind from the beginning is rooted in gender. Men marry women. Women marry men. And being a man or a woman is determined by one’s physical body.

The reason, of course, is obvious. As a group, as a rule, by nature and by design, long-term, monogamous, heterosexual marriages produce the next generation. Successful reproduction requires stable families; stable families are fundamental to civilization; marriages begin families, and a man and a woman make a marriage.

According to Jesus’ thinking, then, same-sex marriage (or any other creative variation) is not only wrong for the same reason divorce is wrong—it corrupts God’s good design—it’s also a contradiction in terms. The word “marriage” has no meaning when used of same-sex couples since heterosexual union is inherent to God’s definition of marriage.

There is nothing ambiguous about Jesus’ view.[viii] Yes, the culture is confused, but there is no reason for you to be confused.

There is something else we learn from Jesus’ formula and from the passage in Genesis He derives it from.

Sex

According to Jesus, in marriage a man cleaves to—and becomes one flesh with—a woman, his wife. Their physical bodies are joined together in a deep, profound sexual union of body and soul, and the two become one. That is the good plan of God.

The passage Jesus cites in Genesis 2 as the Father’s perfect plan covers all of the “alternative sexualities.” Indeed, every single sexual act the Bible explicitly condemns—adultery, fornication, homosexuality, and bestiality—is excluded by Jesus’ simple formula.[ix] The only kind of sexual behavior honorable to God is intimacy between a man and a woman in a lifelong committed relationship—marriage, in other words.

Consider homosexuality, for example. I understand that every depiction of it in popular culture is overwhelmingly positive, and those who differ are characterized as hateful bigots. This is not God’s perspective, though. I want you to pay close attention to the details of a point Paul makes about homosexuality in Romans 1:

God gave them over to degrading passions; for…the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts…. (Rom. 1:26–27)

The word translated “function” here, the Greek word kreesis, is specifically referring to the fit I mentioned earlier. God designed men and women to functionsexually together—their bodies fit together in a precise way to make sexual union possible. Since natural desires go with natural functions, the sexual passion that exchanges the natural function of sex for an unnatural function (homosexuality) is what Paul calls a “degrading passion.”

Notice in particular how Paul explains the nature of this offense before God. He says, “The men abandoned the natural function of the woman,” that is, they rejected the appropriate counterpart God had provided—a woman who was built by Him to be man’s sexual complement. That’s why Scripture has nothing positive to say about homosexuality. Whenever it is mentioned in the Bible, it is condemned.[x]

God also has nothing positive to say about any other sexual behavior outside of marriage—like adultery or fornication—for the same reason: It also corrupts God’s good purpose. Christians who lean progressive do not condone adultery, as far as I know. Nowadays, though, fornication hardly raises an eyebrow—especially among the younger crowd—yet it’s just as much a violation of God’s good plan as homosexuality.

Paul provides another angle you may not have considered. Since our bodies are members of Christ, “one flesh” sexual unions outside of marriage spiritually join Christ (who is in us) to an unholy coupling, sullying the temple of God, our own bodies. That’s why instead of embracing these relationships, Paul says we should flee them (1 Cor. 6:15–20).

Here is Paul’s sobering summary on the status of those who engage in persistent, habitual sexual sin:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators…nor adulterers…nor homosexuals…will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Cor. 6:9–10)

God’s solution for satisfying our sexual appetites is marriage: “Because of [sexual] immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband” (1 Cor. 7:2).[xi] Confusion on this issue, as Paul points out, is deadly deception. Do not be taken in. Scripture is not unclear or ambiguous.

There is a telling passage in the passion narrative where Pilate is confronted by the mob and must decide where his loyalties lie. Mark records his decision: “Wishing to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas for them, and after having Jesus scourged, he handed Him over to be crucified” (Mark 15:15).

Many in Christendom today are taking their cues from Pilate. They are more concerned with satisfying the crowd than being faithful to Jesus. They champion the criminal and turn their back on the Savior.

Culture may be confused on salvation, abortion, gender, marriage, and sex. Don’t you be. On these issues, God has spoken clearly. Faithfulness to our Lord is not theologically complicated.

__________________________

[i] Pluralism in this sense is the view that other religions provide equally valid routes to salvation.

[ii] Though they may be personally against abortion, they still think it ought to be a legitimate option for others.

[iii] I’ve developed this point in detail in the two-part article “One Way or Any Way?” at str.org.

[iv] Find a thorough development of these points with additional supporting text references in the STR booklet Jesus, the Only Way—100 Verses, available at str.org.

[v] In this piece I’m dealing only with the ethical status of abortion itself, not the more complex policy concern of how we prosecute abortion within our legal system. That is a different question I’ll leave to others more skilled in those matters.

[vi] Those who, through a rare congenital defect, are born intersex.

[vii] This internal conflict is known as “gender dysphoria.”

[viii] In light of Matthew 19, the claim that “Jesus never said anything about homosexuality” is groundless. Though Jesus didn’t use the word “homosexuality” here, clearly His teaching on sex and marriage apply to it.

[ix] Notice these all involve sex with someone other than a person’s opposite-sex spouse.

[x] For a detailed treatment of attempts by some within the church to biblically sanitize homosexuality, see “A Reformation the Church Doesn’t Need” at str.org.

[xi] Notice, again, the implicit reference to binary sexuality and the presumption of heterosexual marriage.

[catholiccom-blog]

The True Language of Respect

On a recent episode of Catholic Answers Live that invited callers to explain why they’re “pro-choice,” a few pro-life listeners told our call screener that they objected to our use of that term. They preferred we use the term pro-abortion, and some even accused me of making legal abortion sound more defensible by using the euphemism choice.

In the short amount of time we had left on the show, I explained that by using my opponents’ preferred term I was able to have productive conversations—heard by thousands of other people—that might not have been possible if I had insisted on using pro-abortion. I added that although I generally do this, I don’t always do it. Sometimes it can do more harm than good and even distort the message I am trying to share.

An example of this can be found in Fr. James Martin’s newest book, Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter Into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity. Although it offers some helpful suggestions for priests and bishops (and a few light admonishments of homosexual critics of the Church), there is no call for Catholics with same-sex attraction to “cross the bridge” and embrace God’s plan for their sexuality.

Worse, even though he doesn't call explicitly for the Church to change its teaching on homosexuality, Fr. Martin does seem to suggest that it should change—or at least become more ambiguous and malleable for those who want it to change. This is especially evident in his recommendations for how we talk about homosexual behavior and persons who are attracted to members of the same sex.

On “gay Catholics”

One of the book’s drawbacks is that there is no clear articulation of the Church’s teaching on homosexual behavior. Fr. Martin repeatedly cites the Catechism’s insistence that people with deep-seated homosexual tendencies “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity” (2358), but he never cites the preceding paragraph, which says that homosexual acts represent “grave depravity,” “are contrary to the natural law,” and that “under no circumstances can they be approved” (2357). In fact, Fr. Martin says it is wrong to say homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.”

Concerning the use of labels like “LGBT Catholics,” I could see where, in a private setting, one might use such terms in order to facilitate a conversation. But even in such a case I would always try to not reduce a person’s identity to his sexual attractions, and I would especially not promote the idea one can be an “LGBT Catholic” through a public venue like blogging or radio appearances. That’s because such actions can confuse people and make them think the Church has no moral opposition to homosexual behavior, or that one can be an “LGBT Catholic” in the same way one can be an “Irish Catholic.”

In his book’s rebuttal to Catholics who do not agree with using such labels, Fr. Martin offers this argument:

Some Catholics have objected to this approach, saying that any outreach implies a tacit agreement with everything that anyone in the LGBT community says or does. This seems an unfair objection, because it is raised with virtually no other group. If a diocese sponsors, for example, an outreach group for Catholic business leaders, it does not mean that the diocese agrees with every value of corporate America.

The problem with this argument is that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the concept of “business.” There are immoral businesses, but the idea of business or commerce itself is not wrong. A better comparison for the label “LGBT Catholic” would be “pornographer Catholic,” or “polygamous Catholic.” Moreover, the “LGBT” labels reduce a person to his sexual behavior, which would be dehumanizing even if that behavior weren’t disordered. A person should be defined by his vocation and status as a child of God, not by his sexual proclivities.

But, says Fr. Martin, simple respect means we should use the labels people choose for themselves. He writes, “[R]espect means calling a group what it asks to be called. On a personal level, if someone says to you, ‘I prefer to be called Jim instead of James,’ you would normally listen and call him by the name he prefers. It’s common courtesy.”

This is a bad comparison. Using a variant of someone’s name does not reinforce the mistaken idea that a disordered action is an essential part of that person’s identity. Sometimes respecting someone means not following his wishes, if following them would cause him harm.

Likewise if his request were dishonest. For example, I do not refer to people who received Ph.D.s from unaccredited universities with the title “Dr.” That kind of person hasn’t properly earned that title, and to refer to him that way would involve propagating a lie and cheapening academic degrees in general. In the same way, if I consistently referred to someone as a “gay Catholic,” I would be telling a lie about that person, reducing his identity to a disordered desire. I would have also conjoined the person’s Catholic faith with a serious sin. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith puts it this way:

The human person, made in the image and likeness of God, can hardly be adequately described by a reductionist reference to his or her sexual orientation. Every one living on the face of the earth has personal problems and difficulties, but challenges to growth, strengths, talents and gifts as well. Today, the Church provides a badly needed context for the care of the human person when she refuses to consider the person as a "heterosexual" or a "homosexual" and insists that every person has a fundamental Identity: the creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life.

On “intrinsically disordered”

According to Fr. Martin, “Saying that one of the deepest parts of a person—the part that gives and receives love—is ‘disordered’ in itself is needlessly cruel” (47). In an interview with the Religion News Service, Fr. Martin suggested instead that “the phrase ‘differently ordered’ might convey that idea more pastorally.”

I would argue instead that this expression conveys the idea more ambiguously and is not a sound pastoral approach to homosexuality. If a friend is constructing a barbecue grill and has placed the flame jets so they shoot at his knees instead of the food, you wouldn’t tell him the grill had been “differently assembled.” For the sake of his health you would tell him that he’s using the grill wrong and should stop what he’s doing.

If we love someone with same-sex attraction, we will correct him and urge him to conversion when he engages in behavior that is destructive to body and soul.

Some people think that pastoral means “nice” or “friendly,” but the word’s roots are related to shepherding. Along with being kind, shepherds have to be tough and fight predators that try to destroy his flock while assertively keeping the flock from going astray. The goal of pastoral outreach is to lead someone to Christ; and a person can’t be led to a joyful relationship with Christ if he places a disordered desire at the center of his identity instead of his relationship to God.

To conclude, I’d like to quote Daniel Mattson, a gentleman who is attracted to people of the same sex but refuses to let this define him. (See his recent book, Why I Don't Call Myself Gay: How I Reclaimed My Sexual Reality and Found Peace.) Concerning the CDF quote I referenced earlier, he adds:

With confidence in the Church, I embrace this teaching about my identity in the same way that I have accepted the word “consubstantial” in the Creed. I accept all of the words of the Catechism concerning who I am in nature and in grace. I take no umbrage at the phrase “ objectively disordered” and feel no shame that it truthfully describes my sexual desires. I view my same-sex attraction as a disability, in some ways similar to blindness, or deafness, and I view it with the same hope communicated by Jesus about the man born blind: It has been allowed in my life, so that God’s work would be made manifest in me (cf. John 9:3) . . .

The gay community will become family when those of us in the Church who live with the inclination accept it for what it truly is: a deep wound within our persons which we joyfully choose to unite with the Suffering Christ, on behalf of those we love so dearly in the gay community. By his wounds we are healed, and by the acceptance and transformation of our wounds, through the love of Christ, the Holy Spirit will draw them home to their Heavenly Father.

[spiritualdirections]

Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter Into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity James Martin, SJ. Reviewed by David Cloutier

David Cloutier, associate professor of theology at the Catholic University of America, is quickly becoming one of my favorite Catholic intellectuals, in large part because he’s reliably interesting. He’s well versed in the Catholic tradition and faithful to it, and yet he’s neither a Thomist nor a ressourcement theologian nor a neoconservative, the three dominant schools of intelligent Catholic thinking in my lifetime. It’s hard to pin him down politically--I’d say he’s a man of the Catholic left, but I think that he might be one of the only people on the Catholic left, since much of the left-liberal political thinking of those who identify as Catholic is little more than baptizing the current talking points of the Democratic party without making the effort to show how today’s party line is consonant with Catholic tradition. I’m reading Cloutier’s The Vice of Luxury, and it’s the first book I’ve read that criticizes capitalism while taking both the Church Fathers’ and modern economists’ views seriously.  

Anyway, he reviewed the new book by Fr. James Martin, SJ, on how the Catholic Church ought to relate to the LGBT community. After saying lots of nice things, here’s his (devastating) critique:

There is much to commend in the image of a two-way bridge in which such things are recognized, and the prerequisite for such recognition is the kind of reputation for respect, compassion, and sensitivity to all sides that Martin has justly earned. That said, there are three ways in which the bridge seems shaky. The first is Martin’s initial characterization of the LGBT community as a “group.” At one point, he suggests that church leaders are obligated to treat the LGBT community like any other group—like the elderly or teenagers or different ethnic groups. As in these other cases, the institutional church should respectfully call the group by its chosen name. This question of naming, and its underlying question about the institutional church relating to “groups,” seems to me to be more challenging than Martin indicates. It may be that our tendency to frame ecclesial conversations in terms of group identities mirrors the fractious and often self-serving interest group politics of our society. But beyond that, it is also the case that these other groups do not inherently raise key issues about church teaching. Nor is “LGBT” itself uncomplicated. Some want a more complex label. Importantly, transgender persons raise different challenges from those for gays and lesbians. Deferring to the debatable assumptions about such group labels makes the kinds of comments Martin highlights by Cardinal Schönborn—about the potential value of the faith and love shown within the shared lives of gay and lesbian couples—less effective.

This overly tidy solution about naming leads to the second concern, which is whether this book is written for a socio-political context that no longer exists. At times, I imagined myself reading Building a Bridge in the early 1990s, when as a young Catholic at a very secular liberal arts college, I was learning to negotiate (hopefully with respect, compassion, and sensitivity!) LGBT issues for the first time. But on this issue, the early 1990s seem like ancient history. The idea of generous bridge-building is more difficult when anti-discrimination lawsuits lurk in the wings. Moreover, Catholics have observed decades of church-dividing strife among Protestant churches unable to make this sort of a bridge work, and Martin never hints at why Catholic bridge-building won’t end up in the same place.

Finally, the book never mentions sex. Or more precisely, the only mention of it comes in a quote from an Irish author who explains why gay men might have been attracted to the priesthood because they found “sex with a woman” problematic. Such men “had no blueprint for an easy future,” other than a vow of celibacy that “offered you relief.” Beyond this quote, one would have no idea that the fundamental issue at stake here is sex. Martin is right to point out that bishops and other church leaders are willing to interact with other groups whose agendas and membership do not entirely conform to church teaching (he uses business leaders as an example), but he elides the fact that the issue at the core of the LGBT community is the challenge to church teaching. I presume this omission of the question of sex is intentional, but there is a sense of “let’s pretend” that seems bothersome. Martin is careful never to call magisterial teaching into question, and he is more right than wrong when he points out that, for Jesus, it was “community first, conversion second.” But it was conversion second… and, needless to say, that doesn’t mean “conversion therapy.” It means being willing to avoid sex with a person of the same sex. Official church teaching on this issue isn’t complicated to understand. Just as Catholics should be rightly unhappy if a bishop speaks to business leaders without challenging them on hard questions about the rights of labor, solidarity, and the preferential option for the poor, how can Catholics fault bishops for doing the same thing with the LGBT community? It is true that the analogy here is not complete; business leaders often have cultural power that gays and lesbians do not, nor do they routinely face genuinely unjust discrimination. Nevertheless, especially as cultural power shifts on this issue, the messaging parallel holds: there are both words of compassion and words of challenge. For ultimately, the sexuality is not the problem; the sex is.

And don’t we all know that? It is telling that there cannot be candor about this issue, because it is so obviously a key piece of the bridge. It is resisted in part (not totally, but in part) because of structural obsessions in our society about the necessity of individual sexual fulfillment. The real, culturally perceived “abominable prejudice” Christians hold is the deep conviction that one can live a whole, fulfilling life in the absence of the fulfillment of one’s sexual desires. While we’re on the bridge, let’s talk as a church about chastity, even about involuntary celibacy, so that we might come to discern it as a potential gift, rather than an obvious curse. One wonders if we need church leaders who are able to state their sexual orientation without prejudice, so that they might communicate the possibilities of holiness in following the path of Christ. This is a worthy topic to take up because the effects of a society that so elevates sexual fulfillment should not simply be shouldered by gays and lesbians. There is a larger message here if the bridge can include a frank discussion about sex and contemporary society.

All these questions force us to consider whether Martin’s overall framework is too melioristic, no matter which side of the bridge one is on. Early in the book, he describes the status quo in terms of a group that has “felt hurt” and “excluded” and leaders that “want to reach out…but seem somewhat confused about how to do so.” Proponents of both sides might point out that the core problem is not how to bring together a marginalized group and an awkward church leadership. It’s really about two clashing views on the fundamental truths of justice and love. Each side has core beliefs about what these claims should mean, and we need to confront why those claims are at odds. Again, this is no different from what Catholics should expect from tough conversations on issues like economics and the environment: there is a clash of fundamental moral visions that must be engaged. If we’re going to have a conversation, we might not start with that clash. But any bridge is going to have to cross these troubled waters at some point.

As Cloutier points out, “the fundamental issue at stake here is sex,” not "how to bring together a marginalized group and an awkward church leadership.” Abstracting from that reality won’t lead to an honest conversation, nor will it remove the obstacles faced by the many souls who need the grace of the sacraments but are too prejudiced against the Church to approach them. 

[swamiamarjyoti92-blog]

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[tvdas]

Norman Young’s book review

Ever since the unexpected victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 election, pundits across the country have struggled to understand what has changed about America’s political landscape. A broad, consensus view is that something has gone terribly wrong—that the changes brought about by Donald Trump’s presidency represent a grave threat to progress. Some even go so far as to suggest that the very survival of the West might be in danger. One of the more hopeful members of this group, psychologist Steven Pinker, worries that young people are not grateful for the technological benefits brought about by Enlightenment science. Less hopeful pundit Jonah Goldberg thinks that the West might be committing suicide, because people no longer assume “that ideas matter and character matters.” Yes, that is a potshot at the political pragmatism and moral failings of the current president. Ben Shapiro’s diagnosis is more nuanced than either Pinker’s or Goldberg’s. 

Pinker largely blames a malfunctioning news media for the fact that people have lost faith in the global ruling class which he believes is the force behind the steadily improving quality of life in the world. Goldberg blames people’s lack of faith in “a bundle of ideological commitments” (limited government, natural rights, etc.) which sustain the West’s commitment to capitalism. Ben looks deeper and finds the problem in the fact that the West has lost touch with traditions which, until recently, defined and sustained it: Greek philosophy and Judeo-Christian religion. His solution involves more than merely learning to be grateful or adhering to a few, hard capitalist dogmas. It is only by educating citizens about the importance of Athens and Jerusalem that we can… make the West great again!

In Shapiro’s view, Greek philosophy contributed three fundamental ideas to the West.

Natural Law—the belief that morality derives from the purposes of things that are discoverable in their very nature.

Objective Truth—the belief that the reality of the world outside oneself is discoverable through reason.

Political Government—the greek city-state set an example of democracy, civic virtue, checks and balances, the social contract, and much more.

Jewish religion contributed four fundamental ideas to the West.

Monotheism—the belief that all of nature is one unified thing (a “universe”) because it was created by one God.  

Revealed Morality—the belief that there are some moral truths which human beings cannot access through reason alone, but require divine revelation.

Linear History—the belief that human progress is possible because history is not an endless series of repetitive cycles.

Man as the Image of God—the belief that every human being, not just imperial dictators, have free moral agency.

The combination of Greek and Jewish ideas established the foundations of the West. When the Greek idea that there are objective truths discoverable by reason mixed with the Jewish idea that everything was created by one lawgiver, the foundation of modern science was laid. When the Jewish idea that every individual has free moral agency was added to Greek ideas about political governance and civic virtue, the modern understanding of democratic politics began to develop. The combination of Greek Natural Law and the Ten Commandments became the cornerstone of Western morality.

By now, we’re a third of the way through The Right Side of History. And, so far, so good.

In chapter four, Ben Shapiro begins to describe the historical period from 0 to 1776 AD. Unlike typical narratives which feature a prominent decline into Dark Ages followed by recovery during Reformation or Renaissance, Ben’s narrative looks more like a gradual progression toward ever greater Enlightenment. In some ways, Ben’s unusual description of this period reflects a needed corrective to anti-Catholic or anti-Christian historical bigotry—for instance, he admits that “the age of scientific progress didn’t begin with the Enlightenment” but instead began “in the monasteries of Europe.” In other ways, however, Ben’s narrative merely perpetuates typical Enlightenment-era errors.

The most disappointing aspect of Shapiro’s description of this period of history is the unnecessary distance he puts between Judaism and Christianity. For instance, Ben insists that the Christian doctrine of the deity of Christ makes Jesus “no longer a Jewish figure.” He fails to acknowledge any connection between the Christian concept of incarnation and the Jewish understanding of God’s indwelling in both the temple and the tabernacle. Ben also incorrectly describes Christianity as antinomian, insisting that Christianity “dispensed with the need for [commandments]” because of its focus on faith. This is quite an odd assertion given the centrality of faith to Judaism. In the Old Testament, the covenantal relationship between God and the Jewish people is based on mutual faithfulness—God remaining faithful to His promises and His people remaining faithful to His commandments. The Torah was given precisely so that Israel could demonstrate its faith.

Similar problems saturate the remainder of The Right Side of History. The places where Ben believes his Judaism is deeply divided from Christianity are precisely the places he should acknowledge fundamental agreement between the two faiths.

Ben Shapiro and Protestant Evangelicalism

I suspect that Ben’s desire to distance Judaism from Christianity stems from a deep-seated disdain for Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformer who infamously harbored anti-semitic views. In Ben’s account of history, the Reformation sparked by Luther was not a flowering of religious piety but instead a “rise in religious fundamentalism” which turned the Christian religion into “an obstacle to secular learning.” The reader is never informed exactly how Ben squares this viewpoint with the Protestant founding of America’s great Universities or the fact that Protestant pastors traditionally wear academic robes (as opposed to clerical ones).

Ben’s unfriendly understanding of Protestantism colors his perception of the early history of Western Christianity, as well. In one of Martin Luther’s many fits of overblown piety, he insisted that Reason (especially the philosophical reasoning of the Scholastics) was “the devil’s prostitute” sent to seduce the faithful. This outburst was not representative of Protestant faith, let alone the historical Christian faith of Church Fathers like Saint Augustine. However, by reading Luther’s anti-scholastic views back into early Western history, Shapiro insists that, because of Christianity, “reason had been made secondary to faith.”

Ironically, despite his desire to distance himself from Protestant faith, much of Ben’s perspective on politics springs from Protestant evangelicalism. His cultural analysis mirrors the counter-countercultural conservatism of his parents’ generation (the heyday of the “religious right”) which tended to see society’s increasing moral and cultural relativism as the work of the devil. The influence of the evangelical perspective is obvious in Ben’s earlier works which complain that young Americans live in a Porn Generation, that students have been Brainwashed by secular college professors, and that conservatives swim upstream against the entertainment industry’s Primetime Propaganda. But, it is also noticeable in The Right Side of History when Ben argues that the cultural Marxists of the 1960s were engaged in “pagan revelry” with slogans (e.g. “make love, not war”) which encouraged “unbridle[d] Dionysian paganism.”

It is worth illustrating how Ben attempts to connect Marxism to paganism. Monotheism, he argues, “require[s] that logic govern the universe,” while “the [polytheist] universe must be an interplay of various minds battling with one another for supremacy.” For pagans, “all logic could be deconstructed into interplay of social forces,” which is why pagan empires could absorb an infinite number of gods into their pantheon while the Jewish people believed in absolute truth (tolerating “no other gods,” per Commandment 1). Voila! Tolerance, relativism—these are the values held dear by cultural Marxists, aren’t they?

Not quite. First off, mere relativism is not paganism; it is, in fact, closer to nihilism. Confusion on this point is understandable because nihilists can very quickly become pagans. Humanity abhors nihilism the way nature abhors a vacuum. People tend to believe in something, and paganism—the worship of the self immortalized in the tribe—is the most natural belief system for human beings to fall into. This is why a Nietzschean philosophy of overmen quickly filled the gap left by the “death of God” in Europe.

Secondly, Marxists are neither nihilists nor pagans—although they will weaponize both relativism and tribalism against cultures they want to subvert. Marxists are true believers in a pseudo-Christian utopian vision for society based on principles excised from the Western tradition. Thus, Marxism is best understood as Christian heresy or false messianism. It is no accident that the intersectional culture on America’s left-leaning college campuses perversely embodies Jesus’ description of the Kingdom of God, where “the first shall be last and the last shall be first.”

Shapiro is right to see both Marxism and fascism as enemies of Judeo-Christian values and religious belief, but he is wrong to think that this makes both ideologies equally pagan. Ben uses the word “pagan” the way those of us on the religious right use it: as a stand-in for the unfashionable term “infidel.” Religious conservatives sometimes call Marxists pagan when we really mean to say that Marxists are infidels who reject the truth of the Bible and reduce Christian values to expressions of bourgeois class status. We also call fascists pagan when we really mean to say that they are infidels who reject religious belief and subsume religious traditions under the direction of the state.

Despite the confused terminology, Protestant evangelicals instinctively oppose both the neo-pagan fascists on the alt-Right and the neo-messianic Marxists on the far-Left. In order to defend the West against these twin enemies, some on the religious right have elevated a quick-witted Orthodox Jew into a prominent leader of their Culture War. Is it too much to ask that, in return, Ben Shapiro refrain from describing their Protestant faith as an obstacle to Western greatness?

Ben Shapiro and Protestant Nationalism

An appreciation of Protestantism would also improve Ben’s understanding of nationalism. As it stands, Ben’s view falls somewhere between Jonah Goldberg’s distaste for “romantic nationalism” and Yoram Hazony’s praise for the kind of nationalism that respects basic human rights and other nations’ borders. However, in order to make his middle position cohere, Ben needs to resolve a dissonance between their disparate perspectives. Yoram insists that the problem with history’s worst nationalist regimes was their universalism; Goldberg insists that the problem was their tribalism. In reality—and Ben should like this—the heart of the problem was their rejection of Judaic values.

For all of Yoram Hazony’s criticism of universalism, he is actually a closeted universalist. That fact is hidden in the title of his book: The Virtue of Nationalism. Without a conception of value that is universal, how could he possibly judge nationalism to be a virtue? Yoram’s respect for “the Protestant construction of the West” is really an endorsement of the way Protestant nations followed the Biblical example in their conception of nationhood. His judgment that Westphalian nationalism is virtuous involves the universalization of his own Judaic values that are derived from the Hebrew Bible.

That said, Yoram Hazony’s perspective on nationalism provides a needed corrective to Jonah Goldberg’s orthodox understanding of the Thirty Years’ War. Pro-Enlightenment thinkers like Goldberg tend to assume that the Peace of Westphalia resulted, not from ideological development, but rather from the sheer exhaustion of both sides of an internecine religious conflict. I found it surprising that Ben Shapiro agreed with Goldberg’s view in his book, since he is typically loathe to reduce historical forces to a material substrate. I expected Ben to endorse the perspective put forward in Yoram’s book, which says that the Thirty Years’ War, far from reflecting religious divisions, actually fell along national lines and reflected Europe’s growing national consciousness. If Yoram’s view is correct—and I think it is—the conflict was not so much a “religious war” as the birth-pangs of nationalism.

What really exhausted itself during the Thirty Years’ War was not religion, but paganism. During previous centuries, a decline in the moral legitimacy of the Catholic papacy coincided with growing infidelity and religious schism. By the 17th century, paganism had filled much of the space left open by a decline in Christian belief. Renewed interest in pagan classicism during the Renaissance period was not, as pro-Enlightenment theorists often believe, a flowering of “secular learning” over and against “religious superstition.” On the contrary, this period saw a surge of pseudo-science and spikes in witch-hunts and inquisitions. The leaders of the Thirty Years’ War, although nominally Protestant and Catholic, were fighting to replace the dominant position once held by the Catholic Church with empires ruled by their own particular “chosen” ethnicities—a truly pagan ambition.  

The Protestant construction of the West was not merely a side-effect of the failure of neo-pagan empires to gain the upper hand in Europe. It was also a return to the Judaic values embedded in Christianity which circumscribed the pagan ambitions of European nations. For centuries after Westphalia, when Western nations made appeals to “international law,” they did not refer to a multilateral body with enforcement powers, but to a generally-acknowledged moral minimum endorsed by Nature and Nature’s God. It was to this standard that America’s Founders appealed in order to justify their revolution against the British Crown.

Ben Shapiro considers the United States of America to be the “crown jewel” of the West, but he gives most of the credit for its founding to the Enlightenment philosophy of one particular Englishman. He never acknowledges Locke's debt to Puritanism. He never mentions that nearly every one of those who were willing to risk their lives for a new birth of freedom by signing the Declaration of Independence were Protestant. Is it too much to ask for Ben to acknowledge the role played by Protestantism in the founding of America?

Ben Shapiro and Protestant Existentialism

Cheerleaders for the Enlightenment tend to agree with Ben that a shift in the West from an Aristotelian conception of the universe to a humanist one “obliterat[ed] mankind as the jewel of the cosmos, bringing him low, returning him to the animals rather than allowing him to aspire to join the divine.” In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth. Humanism turned man into the only thing of value in the cosmos, making him “the measure of all things,” and transforming the very nature of morality into concern for humanity’s material well-being. To this day, the only thing secular humanists will consider quasi-divine is the brain’s ever-mysterious spark of consciousness—leading some to even start calling themselves “sentientists.”

The advent of humanism transformed science into a project with the sole purpose of promoting human flourishing through technological advancement. As Francis Bacon put it, knowledge should be “a spouse, for generation, fruit, and comfort,” and not “a courtesan, for pleasure and vanity only.” Ben correctly notes, in his book, that “Francis Bacon dispensed with the Aristotelian notion of final causes in science” which had provided the basis for the belief that nature has ends of its own which must be respected. Ben does not mention that this philosophic change corresponded with colonial expansion and the displacement of an old, feudal order—one which respected natural law and claimed to be legitimized by it—by a new, increasingly powerful bourgeoise.

Ben claims that the historical trajectory set in motion by the new science of Francis Bacon culminated in the atheistic philosophy of David Hume, which represented “the final step away from ethical monotheism and Greek teleology and toward outright atheism.” Yes and no. While it is true that the removal of form and purpose from science disenchanted nature, the new scientific understanding of the natural world was hardly a threat to “ethical monotheism.” In fact, it strengthened it. Deism placed God safely outside of nature, where He (and only He) could be the source of moral purpose. So long as humanity continues to conceive the natural world as it is described by humanist science, David Hume will remain precisely correct: no description of what is(what scientists will agree to be objectively true) can ever tell us what ought to be.

In the face of this cold and morally indifferent scientific cosmos—which would become increasingly brutish and cruel with the development of Darwinism—religious existentialists took a leap of faith. Jewish existentialist philosopher Martin Buber described the scientific outlook on the world as an “I-It” relationship to the cosmos, which he contrasted with a religious “I-Thou” relationship that is open to revelation. I find it shocking that Shapiro—an Orthodox Jew seeking to bring together Greek reason and Judaic revelation—never once mentions Buber. The only religious existentialist Ben discusses is Kierkegaard, whose Christian philosophy he curtly dismisses as equivalent to “the view of Nietzsche” which “would lead not to God, in the end, but to worship of subjectivity.”

However, only pages after unjustifiably dismissing religious existentialism, Ben unwittingly recapitulates the religious existentialist view. In imitation of Kierkegaard, Ben explains his own personal exegesis of Genesis 22. The true meaning of the story of Abraham and Isaac, Ben explains, is that all parents “are asked to put [thei]r own children in danger for the sake of a higher ideal.” “What God asks of us,” he continues, “is not only that we become defenders of valuable and eternal truths, but that we train our children to become defenders of those truths as well.” In other words, as for Ben and his house, they will remain faithful Jews even if the Nazis rise again and threaten the Jewish people with annihilation. God bless him. That requires a real, existential leap of faith.

When the Nazis did rise, that very same leap was taken by Reformed theologian Karl Barth and Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who resisted Nazi policy in Germany by standing firm on a theology that was existentially committed to Judaic revelation. Once again, Ben Shapiro fundamentally agrees with faithful Protestants who risked their lives to preserve the very values he holds dear. Is it too much to ask for Ben to refrain from dismissing their faith as mere Nietzschean subjectivism?

The Problem of Antisemitism

Ben Shapiro says—and I agree—that one of the most important values of the West is found in Genesis 1:26, when God says, “Let us make man in our image.” As a Protestant, I am tempted to follow Ben’s interpretation of this verse as being primarily about individual rights, but I do not think that this understanding is correct. The Judeo-Christian perspective on rights is that they come from God’s inviolable covenant with His people, whereby God binds Himself by His promises and remains faithful to His Word. As Ben says in his book,

“...the patriarch Abraham asks God to abide by His own rules for right and wrong … Abraham argues with God over right and wrong, and asks God whether collective punishment is appropriate … God answers him; God doesn’t merely ignore Abraham or silence him. Rather, He engages with him.”

In Judaism and Catholicism, God covenants with His people as a group, protecting the whole community against rulers and powers of this world. In Protestantism, God covenants directly with every individual believer. This is why, in the American conception, a personal connection with the Creator becomes the source of individual rights—especially the right to be free from coercion in religious matters. If we remove the Protestant gloss from Genesis 1:26, the verse still powerfully undermines the claims of kings and emperors. However, it does so not by making every individual a tiny sovereign, but rather by insisting on a radically egalitarian vision of humanity that pulls powerful men down to the level of the common person (a theme that saturates the whole Bible). Nietzsche reacted against this Biblical vision when he said,

“It was the Jews who, in opposition to the aristocratic equation (good = aristocratic = beautiful = happy = loved by the gods), dared with a terrifying logic to suggest the contrary equation, and indeed to maintain with the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of weakness) this contrary equation, namely, ‘the wretched are alone the good; the poor, the weak, the lowly, are alone the good; the suffering, the needy, the sick, the loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones who are blessed, for them alone is salvation.’”

Nietzsche is right—Judaism flipped the moral equation on the powerful. Rather than blessing the powerful with victory, as pagan gods would do, Jehovah sent His wrath against those who preyed upon the weak and the lowly. The blood of those unjustly killed “cries out to me from the ground,” says the Lord in Genesis 4:10. Ben Shapiro and the evangelical Christians who comprise the bulk of his audience fundamentally agree on this point, which is why we all deeply oppose abortion. We know that any justification for killing the weakest and most undesirable members of society is a step out onto the slippery slope which descends into the eugenic evils of Nazism.

Nietzsche also correctly recognizes that Christianity is a branch from the root of Judaism. Ben agrees, but worries that a nefarious kernel is buried within Christianity which occasionally springs forth in outbursts of antisemitism. He cringes at the Apostle Paul’s criticism of “Judaizers” and at Jesus’ condemnation of Pharisees and money-changers because he knows that these words were used to slander and persecute Jews many times in European history. Ben’s fear is understandable, and only slightly misplaced. The problem of antisemitism is not inside Christianity, but inside Christians. Within every Christian believer (and every Christian nation) is a man (or a people) that is naturally pagan, and must be converted anew with every passing generation. All too often in the history of the West, the trappings of Christendom existed as a thin veneer or tribal identifier covering essentially pagan peoples who had not absorbed Judeo-Christian values.

It is not hard to tell the difference between Gentiles who are Christians and those who remain unconverted pagans. For one thing, their understanding of the New Testament is entirely opposite. A pagan who reads the book of Matthew and hears about Israel’s rejection of Jesus gets angry at the Jews. If he watches a passion play, he jeers at the conspiring Jewish Sanhedrin because he imagines that he belongs to a superior stock that would be incapable of such actions. A converted Christian reading the same story or watching the same play directs his anger inward. He does not holler at Christ’s Jewish persecutors, because he realizes that he shares Israel’s tendency to fall away from God. The inner pagan scoffs at the prideful Pharisee, but the Christian recognizes, as did King David, that “I am the man who has sinned against God.” In other words, while a pagan thinks Jesus was crucified because they sinned, a Christian knows that Jesus really died because I sin.

Christians who have absorbed Judaic values seek to emulate the Jews, not replacethem. Protestant Separatists who landed at Plymouth Rock deeply identified with Biblical Israel and its journey through the wilderness into the Promised Land. At the height of Europe’s greatness, Protestant nations deliberately modeled themselves after the Kingdom of Israel as described in the Old Testament. Today, Protestant evangelicals who desire to make America great again stand allied with Ben Shapiro in staunch support of the nation of Israel. I hope that, going forward, Ben will recognize that any antisemitism that comes from those who profess Christ is really a backslide into paganism caused by the sin of ethnic pride.

Conclusion

Modern-day pagans often voice support for Western greatness. But, they do not love the West for what it is; they love it for being Caucasoid. Modern-day secular humanists also support Western greatness. But, they do not really love the West at all; they just want to be able to continue enjoying the material comforts afforded to them by Western technology. The former are parasites who corrupt the West from within. The latter are freeloaders who cannot be relied upon to defend the West in the breach. Ben Shapiro is neither of these. Like the counter-countercultural Protestants of the “Silent Majority” generation, like the Protestant signers of the Declaration of Independence, like the Protestant existentialists who resisted German Nazism, and like the Protestant evangelicals who make up the bulk of his audience, Ben is a real defender of the West and a true believer in the values that make it great.

Sometimes, defending the West can be a messy business. Sometimes it requires associating oneself with an obnoxious figure who has deep, moral failings. This gives observers a chance to confuse our principled stance with hypocrisy or an endorsement of immorality. Unfortunately, that is a price defenders of the West often have to pay. Some people—especially those who pride themselves in their Judeo-Christian moral purity—find that price to be too high. Their timidity is understandable. It is far more comfortable to retreat into an intellectual monastery than to get one's hands dirty with the realities of the political world.

We Protestants have never had much use for monasticism. We have chosen to fight. We cannot and will not recant—for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here we stand. We can do no other. God help us.

[kabane52]

Howdy, apparently enter sends something to you. Sorry about that. this a post on r/orthodoxchristianity mentioned you and said you know a good deal about NT Wright. His writings pushed me into Orthodoxy. I was wondering if I could spare your thoughts on what Orthodoxy can agree with Wright on and what they disagree with him on (obviously the Theotokos, but what else?)

Hey there. Thanks for the question. I’m going to copy and paste what I said on Reddit about Surprised by Hope and then add a note on Wright’s view of justification:

Wright's book "Surprised by Hope" opened up new vistas for me when I first read it back in 2012. I think in many ways it's quite congruent with Orthodox theology. So here's what I'd say:

1. The resurrection body is absolutely not just an aside in Orthodox theology. It is the heart and soul of our faith, and that's evident in our Paschal Liturgy- Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the Tombs bestowing life. The resurrection of the dead is the resurrection of the body. This is found throughout the Church Fathers: check out St. Athanasius' "On the Incarnation", for example.

2. For Orthodox Christians, the person is a tripartite unity: the spirit, the soul, and the body. Christ assumed the entirety of this tripartite nature and communicated life to every aspect of humanity through sharing in every aspect of humanity. Because suffering and death had been brought into the world through Adam, Christ shared in suffering and death. In sharing in these realities, He undid them. He communicated life to death and thereby turned death back, emerging from the Tomb in a glorified and transfigured body.

3. In our Christian life, the Spirit communicates the life of Christ to our spirits- it flows from the spirit to the soul and from the soul to the body. Some people criticize the Orthodox emphasis on the ascetic life as anti-body. It is exactly the opposite. The human person is ordered so that the soul is animated by the spirit and the body is animated by the soul. In living an ascetic life, one does not destroy the body but puts it in proper relation to the soul, which leads to its salvation. The glory of God which passes to us through the Holy Spirit animates the body.

4. This is precisely what St. Paul teaches us in the Letter to the Romans. In Romans 1:23, he tells us that humanity has "exchanged the glory of the immortal God for [idolatrous images]." Note the connection of glory and immortality. He tells us in Romans 2:6-8 that the righteous receive "glory, honor, and immortality" at the resurrection of the dead. In Romans 3:23, he tells us that "all have sinned and lack the glory of God" which is innertextually connected with Romans 5:12, where we are told that all die because all sin like Adam. Sin, which is fundamentally idolatry, means the forfeiture of the glory of God and the gradual disintegration of the human person. In Romans 6:7, Paul tells us that Christ was "raised by the glory of the Father", and all of this explains why in Romans 8, it is glory that is revealed "in us" at the resurrection of the dead.

It's interesting that the only two uses of the word "Image" in Romans are in Romans 1:23 and Romans 8:29. The former are idolatrous images, but the latter refers to the conformance of man to the "Image of [God's] Son"- a process which concludes with man being "glorified" in Romans 8:30. The incarnation and the communication of divine glory to those in Christ through the Spirit is the undoing of idolatry.

5. I think Wright's reaction against the implicit Gnosticism in some Western Christianity leads him to somewhat underemphasize the intermediate state. A good way to understand this is to look at Revelation 20. We are told in this passage of the millennium, which is the Church Age. At the beginning of the millennium, the Saints are seated around Christ in the heavenly council (this has a lot of relevance to the intercession of Saints in Scripture, as I explain here: http://kabane52.tumblr.com/post/129918380450/a-biblical-theology-of-the-invocation-of-saints ), and this is called the "first resurrection." The way to understand this is evident by contrasting it by what is called the "second death." The second death refers to the resurrection of the unrighteous- by implication, the "first resurrection" is the death of the righteous. As he often does, St. John explains in Revelation what Jesus meant in the Gospel of John- those who "live and believe in me shall never die." Why? Because the death of the Christian is itself the first resurrection!

6. Moses makes a distinction between two kinds of prophets in Numbers 11-12. I have explained elsewhere how a prophet in Scripture means someone who has the gift of the Spirit, so we are all prophets in this sense in the new covenant. The distinction is between those who have the Spirit but must discern his workings and those who have the Spirit and thereby behold God directly. This is the experience of those in Heaven (and a few on Earth, whom we call the Saints), and this is why a soul who goes to Heaven is exalted, and why it is considered very important in Orthodoxy.

7. Obviously, I think Wright is dead wrong in his critique of the intercession of Saints, and even of purgatory. Orthodox theology holds to an intermediate state of purification for some souls which is functionally equivalent to what contemporary Catholicism teaches about purgatory- though it is not equivalent with what some medieval Catholics taught about it.

Sorry for the length. I hope this is helpful.

Now, as for Wright’s view on justification. Wright’s view is that Jesus’ life was marked out by faith- pistis Christou is to be understood as the “faithfulness of the Messiah.” Thus, when one has faith, one is identified as “in Christ” and God imputes the death and resurrection of Jesus to one’s account, thereby accounting one as righteous. He bases this on Romans 6 where Paul’s audience is told to reckon themselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. But this doesn’t say what Wright wants it to: it’s not God reckoning these things to believers, but believers reckoning these things to themselves precisely because God has wrought an ontological change in them through sharing in the death and resurrection of Christ. That’s important. Wright, while arguing for a Pauline doctrine of theosis, dismisses the idea that it is to be understood as the content of justification, arguing that the dikao word group is inherently forensic. While he is correct that justification is forensic, he misses the point. When God raised Jesus from the dead, He was justified- He had been declared guilty by the Jews and Romans, but God undid that verdict by glorifying His body. This is why Jesus is described as “justified by the Spirit” in 2 Timothy 3:16. In other words, Jesus was justified precisely in and through the transfiguration of His body by divine glory. Thus, for us to share in the faithfulness of the Messiah means to live by the pattern of His life and death, by the Holy Spirit- our justification takes place precisely as we are transfigured by the life of God, in Christ, by the Spirit. 

[thesundayread]

Look Again

By Laurissa Senecal

He came. He died. He rose again.

It’s not something most people haven’t heard before. We’re in the Bible belt, everyone and their grandma has been to church at least once. The story of Jesus and his unconditional love, once an earth-shattering reality, has become nothing more than a fairy tale, or worse, a story full of dread and accompanied by guilt and judgment.

We live in an age where the young rule the old. While for centuries the younger generations looked to the elderly for guidance, we, the young, the beautiful, view parents and grandparents as incapable of knowledge. Their values have become our hatred, their beliefs something to scoff at.

It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? When did we start to believe that the people who have lived here longer than we have know less than we do about living?

Christianity, Jesus Christ, the resurrection; like childhood playthings we have thrown these concepts aside to gather dust with Barbie, GI Joe and Mr. Potato Head. If Mom and Dad believe it, we want nothing to do with it. Mom and Dad don’t understand feminism, they don’t understand equality and they can’t fathom why Donald Trump is wrong. Why should we agree with something as fundamental as their faith if they don’t see how backwards their beliefs are in all these other ways?

Guys, I hear ya. Many terrible and hateful things have happened in the name of Christ. Our parents tell us that Jesus will protect us but then bad things happen and we wonder why. People wearing the cross around their necks hurl insults at other drivers, living lives as full of hate as people without the cross. They scream in the faces of women wanting to abort and call feminism a plague. I know, guys. I know. It hurts me too. It truly breaks my heart.

It breaks my heart because the way these people represent Christianity is not in alignment with how it was ever supposed to be.

Christianity has been around for thousands of years and it isn’t going anywhere. It has spread from country to country, despite opposition, despite the threat of death, it has spread and it will continue to spread. Our parents and grandparents believe in it for the same reason their parents and grandparents did, because there is something about it that doesn’t just die out.

If the word “Christianity” carries with it too many negative associations, let’s drop it for a minute. Let go, for a second, of the images associated with the thing and let’s just focus on the subject.

Here, simply, is the message.

God created a world with order and amazing things and gave that world to people. These people, whom He also made, were the only things that were able to experience love because they had the ability to choose. Everything else was ruled by instinct and science, but people could choose to do what they wanted. They could choose to acknowledge God, glorifying Him in that way, and they could choose to not glorify Him.

So when these people decided they didn’t want to love God, He was pretty heartbroken. He loved these people so much but he had given them the ability to choose, and He wasn’t going to change his mind about that. He was incredibly fair.

Years and years go by, and these people keep running from God, the occasional human turning to recognize Him. They were miserable because they didn’t know who they were supposed to be, because they had turned their backs on the only person who knew the secret to their happiness. Wars, killings, isolation and death. This was the life they chose, the life without God, the source of all life and love.

But God wasn’t going to leave it that way. They couldn’t help themselves, so He was going to reach down and help them. But at this point, they had done so much disobeying that someone had to pay for all the sin. There was no way for them to be near Him. A fair God can’t be fair if He decides to make exceptions. That would be incredibly inconsistent with His nature.

So He came down to the earth He had made, God of the universe entering the corrupted world of His subjects, and He lived a perfect life on that earth, ultimately dying a gruesome, nasty death, the one the people in the world he created deserved. God, the eternal, died, humbled himself and then rose again.

So now, all any of us have to do to be with this God and to be in a relationship with the person who made us, is accept the death He died as a covering for the many, many times we slapped Him and His laws in the face.

That’s it, guys. It’s really all about unconditional love. Jesus hated racism, loving people from all places He visited even when other people got mad. Jesus hated the way women were looked down upon, making women key players in his ministry. Jesus hated the way some were judged for decisions they had made, scolding prideful people for looking down on others.

That’s all.

(Image: Google Images | Courtesy)

[giliprooo]

The Devil - Lucifer - is a force for good (where I define 'good' simply as that which I value, not wanting to imply any universal validity or necessity to the orientation). 'Lucifer' means 'light-bringer' and this should begin to clue us in to his symbolic importance. The story is that God threw Lucifer out of Heaven because Lucifer had started to question God and was spreading dissension among the angels. We must remember that this story is told from the point of view of the Godists (if I may coin a term) and not from that of the Luciferians (I will use this term to distinguish us from the official Satanists with whom I have fundamental differences). The truth may just as easily be that Lucifer resigned from heaven. God, being the well-documented sadist that he is, no doubt wanted to keep Lucifer around so that he could punish him and try to get him back under his (God's) power. Probably what really happened was that Lucifer came to hate God's kingdom, his sadism, his demand for slavish conformity and obedience, his psychotic rage at any display of independent thinking and behavior. Lucifer realized that he could never fully think for himself and could certainly not act on his independent thinking so long as he was under God's control. Therefore he left Heaven, that terrible spiritual-State ruled by the cosmic sadist Jehovah, and was accompanied by some of the angels who had had enough courage to question God's authority and his value-perspective. Lucifer is the embodiment of reason, of intelligence, of critical thought. He stands against the dogma of God and all other dogmas. He stands for the exploration of new ideas and new perspectives in the pursuit of truth. God demands that we believe everything that he tells us, and that we do everything that he says without questioning. Destroy a tribe including the women, children and animals down to last one? (Joshua 6.21). Why of course. Wait a minute, this doesn't seem very nice. SILENCE FOOL. HOW DARE YOU QUESTION ME. I AM GOD AND YOU MUST OBEY ME WITHOUT QUESTIONING. ACCEPT WHAT I SAY ON FAITH. BURN THOSE WHO DARE QUESTION MY WORD. DESTROY THEIR BOOKS. SHUT DOWN THEIR SCHOOLS. TELL THEM THAT DISOBEDIENCE MEANS THAT THEY WILL BURN FOREVER AND EVER, IN UNIMAGINABLE AGONY FOR ALL ETERNITY, AND REMEMBER THAT YOU WILL SUFFER THE SAME UNLESS YOU GO OUT AND TELL THEM THIS. Yes Sir, God Sir, whatever you say. See, here I am burning their books, pulling out their nails, torturing them for questioning Church dogma, banning the use of anaesthetic in child-bearing (since the pain is their just punishment for the acts of Adam and Eve). Help! I thought an improper thought! Help me to blind my mind God, help me to not see what my reason tells me. Let me repress thoughts of sexual desire, doubts about you and your orders, feelings of tolerance. They call Lucifer the Prince of Lies. A lie is defined by the Christian as anything which contradicts the Word of God - as told to us by the Bible and God's representatives on Earth. If we accept this definition of a lie then we should praise lies. A "lie" is then a questioning of blind dogma. The "lies" of Lucifer are attacks on irrational beliefs, beliefs based on fear and conformity to authority. Of course we should not call these lies. They are temptations to think for ourselves, a call for independent thought, a plea for taking responsibility for our own thinking and our own lives. Praise Lucifer! Praise the pursuit of truth through rationality. God was right to tell us to not worship false idols, but he refrained from telling us that all idols are false, and that all worship is dangerous. Even our praise of Lucifer must not be worship of an idol, but rather an expression of our agreement with his value-orientation and his perspective. God and his Godists hate Lucifer's call for rationality. Critical thinking digs at the very roots of God's and their power over our minds. Independent thinkers do not make good slaves. Lucifer is the Prince of Lies because he is an expert at helping us to be rational. He shows us how to use our intelligence and how to take responsibility for ourselves. We should emulate him in encouraging this trend in ourselves and in others. He needs help since he is working against the laziness and neuroticism of many humans. It's so much easier to just not try to think, to sit back and let other people tell you what you should do, what to believe, and where to give your money. Why, if I had to think for myself I would have to face the fact that I might be wrong. Horrors! I would have to think carefully about my life and the reality that I live in carefully and that would take a lot of work. No, it's much easier to have faith, to accept, to believe, to obey. God also hates us to enjoy ourselves, If we let ourselves experience too much pleasure then we might lose interest in obeying him. We might start running our own lives to bring us positive rewards rather than directing ourselves to avoid his wrath. We might become focussed on pursuing the positive instead of avoiding the negative. That would result in the downfall, of religious and state authority, so God has to stamp out such tendencies. He hates Lucifer who keeps turning up and tempting us to have a good time, to enjoy our lives. Adam and Eve's sin was to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. They dared to disobey a direct order which God expected them to obey without question, blindly. They acquired reason and intelligence, and an ability to decide for themselves the values that they would pursue. Ever since them humans have been uppity - always giving God trouble. Dammit, even some of the Catholics are questioning the Pope's infallibility. Well that's just tough God; some of us are going to do our best to see that humans continue to become even more difficult to handle - both by you and by your human followers on Earth - the religious authorities and the Statists. God likes altruism, altruism understood as true self-sacrifice and not as giving up a minor value to achieve a more important one (which is just one aspect of rationality). If God can just get us all to be good altruists then we will be so much easier to control. Altruists do what they are told without complaint; a complaint would be based in self-interest; it would be a claim to live one's own life without having to direct it towards the lives of others or towards the interests of God or "the State". Lucifer perseveres in trying to point out to us that we have no reason to accept altruism. We can choose our values for ourselves, just as we can think for ourselves. Lucifer himself values the pursuit of happiness, knowledge, and new experiences. Most of all he values self-responsibility and independence even if that means that some people will not choose to value the things that he values. The extropians among us who share his perspectives and value- orientation should help him in his work. God had a clever and nasty strategy to promote altruism and therefore obedience. He tries to get us to believe in Original Sin. He wants us to believe that we are born sinful, that we were evil and needed saving even before we had done anything. We need God and his agents to save us from Sin otherwise we will burn FOREVER and we will miss out on an infinite and perfect reward (though he never tells us just what this is). Our path to salvation lies in service to God, selfless self-sacrificial service to God and his dogma. Without the idea of original sin we might not be so careful to obey God since we might figure that we were living pretty well and would go to heaven anyway (foolishly failing to inquire what heaven is like). Fortunately for God, Original Sin guarantees that we will always feel under threat. We will always be unclean and in danger of suffering hellfire. To make quite sure that our personal responsibility is destroyed, and that we put ourselves in God's hands for him to mould us as he wishes, God and his moronic minions repeatedly tells us that Jesus Christ is the Way and that he died for our sins. Redemption lies through faith and obedience. Notice what happens when Christ supposedly died for our sins. His act brought about our possibility of salvation. What I want to know is: how can someone else's act excuse me from anything? I am responsible for my own actions. Nothing that I do can take away the fact that someone else acting in a certain way, and nothing that they can do can absolve me of my own responsibility. Original Sin and salvation by Christ are both deeply offensive ideas to me and to all extropians who value individual responsibility. In ending this discussion, I want to remind you that you are all Popes. You are all you own highest authority. You are the source of your action. You choose your values - whether you do so actively or by default. You choose what to believe, how strongly to believe, and what you will take as disconfirming evidence. No one has authority over you - you are your own authority, your own value-chooser, your own thinker. Join me, join Lucifer, and join Extropy in fighting God and his entropic forces with our minds, our wills, and our courage. God's army is strong, but they are backed by ignorance, fear, and cowardice. Reality is fundamentally on our side. Forward into the light!

[nolimitsongrace]

July 30: Christ Like Attitudes We Must ‘Put On’ Christ Like Attitudes We Must ‘Put On’July 30, 2020Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering… — Colossians 3:12Let me challenge you today: Set aside some quality time to be alone with God and make this specific request of Him: “Father, I ask You to show me what areas of my life need to be adjusted so they more accurately represent the attitude of Jesus Christ.” And as you begin a search with that question in your heart, I suggest that you begin with Colossians 3:12, where Paul described the Christ-like attitudes we need to implement in our lives.Paul wrote, “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering.” Paul’s choice of wording for each character trait is very specific, so let’s take time today to deconstruct them to better discern his exact meaning of each one.*[If you started reading this from your email, begin reading here.]

To begin, I want to focus on the phrase “bowels of mercies,” which sounds very strange in today’s vernacular but conveys a powerful message. It is a translation of two Greek words, splagnon and oiktirmos. The word splagnon refers to the inner organs of a human body, or more specifically, the bowels, and the word oiktirmos denotes compassion or a deeply felt urge to help relieve some kind of pain or sorrow.Before I elaborate further on the Greek word splagnon (“bowels”), I must ask you to pardon me in advance for being so blunt with my explanation. However, it is important to consider the function of bowels in order to understand the reason why that word is used in connection with “mercy” and “compassion” in the New Testament.Physically, when your bowels move, you feel it deeply. When the process is done, the bowels have made a physical deposit and rid the body of human waste. The purpose of these feelings, however, is not superficial — they are a sign that the intestines are working to push waste through the system and out of the body.Thus, by using the word splagnon, Paul was saying that deep feelings of compassion should do more than merely provoke pity for a person’s situation; they should spur you to action. When these feelings begin to well up deep within your spirit, you must surrender to them and let them work through your inner man until they manifest through your words and actions. As you do this, God’s Spirit simultaneously works through you to reach out and make a spiritual deposit into those who are suffering, sorrowful, or going through a difficult time in their lives. To feel that inner pain without taking any action simply produces no benefit.It’s interesting to note that “bowels of mercies” is the very first Christ-like attitude that Paul listed in Colossians 3:12. Throughout the four gospels, the Greek words splagnon and oiktirmos are frequently used together to describe moments when Jesus was “moved with compassion.” The Bible tells us that when Jesus experienced this feeling, compassion flowed from deep inside Him to help multitudes, heal the sick, or otherwise demonstrate God’s kindness to people who were in need (see Matthew 14:14-21; 15:32-38; 20:34; Mark 1:41,42; 6:34-44; 8:2-9; Luke 7:13-15). By listing this quality first, Paul was urging us not to focus on our own needs but rather to turn our attention outward to others who are in trouble and allow our hearts to feel their pain until we are inwardly touched !Is there someone you know who needs a touch of God’s compassion? That divine compassion is deposited deep inside your spirit, and if you will yield to it, it will flow from the deepest part of your being to heal, change, deliver, and bring relief to that person in need. So I exhort you: Please don’t shut off your bowels of compassion! If you sense the urge growing and building inside your spirit to alleviate another person’s pain, let that compassion flow and bring him or her the delivering power of God.The next attitude Paul told us to put on in Colossians 3:12 is “kindness.” This is a translation of the Greek word chrestotes, which means to show kindness or to be friendly to others. In Greek history, it often depicted rulers, governors, or others in positions of leadership and authority who were kind, mild, and benevolent to their subjects. Anyone who demonstrated this quality of chrestotes was considered to be compassionate, considerate, sympathetic, humane, kind, and gentle. Elsewhere in Scripture, the apostle Paul used this word chrestotes to depict God’s incomprehensible kindness for people who are unsaved (see Romans 11:22; Ephesians 2:7; Titus 3:4). One scholar has noted that when the word chrestotes is applied to interhuman relationships, it conveys the idea of being adaptable to others.When chrestotes is working in a believer, that believer strives to become adaptable to the needs of those around him rather than harshly requiring everyone else to adapt to his own needs and desires. This is so contrary to the flesh, which says, “Excuse me, but if you don’t like me the way I am, that’s tough! This is the way I am, and if you don’t like it, you can just get out of here. I’m not changing for anyone!”When the Holy Spirit produces “kindness” in you, your entire mode of thinking will change. You’ll begin to ask people, “How can I be different for you? Is there any way I can change that will help you? Is there anything I can do better for you? How can I serve you to meet your needs more effectively?”When you become adaptable to meet the needs of other people, a supernatural work of God takes place in your heart, and you grow substantially in your spiritual walk as a result. If this kindness hasn’t started to work in you yet, today would be a great day for you to ask the Holy Spirit to start producing this Christ-like attitude in your life!Paul continued in Colossians 3:12 by urging us to allow “humbleness of mind” to develop in our lives. The Greek word used here is tapeinophrosune, a compound of the words tapeinos and phronos. The word tapeinos is translated humility, and it depicts the attitude of one who is humble, lowly, and willing to stoop to any level that is needed. The word phronos simply means to think. When these two words are compounded, as in this verse, the new word portrays the attitude of someone who is unassuming and not self-promoting. It suggests a person who is modest and unpretentious.Does “humbleness of mind” operate in your life? Jesus was known for stooping to the level of everyone around Him in order to minister life to them. Had He seen Himself as “better” or “more deserving” than others, He never would have died on the Cross for you and me. Kindness is also a Christ-like attitude that the Holy Spirit strongly desires to produce in all of our lives. Is it working in you right now, or is this an area in which you need to allow the Holy Spirit to work more deeply in your character?In this remarkable list of Christ-like attitudes found in Colossians 3:12, Paul next mentioned “meekness.” Most people assume that if a person is meek, he must be weak. However, this is a grossly incorrect view of the word “meekness.” In reality, “meekness” is one of the strongest attributes a person can possess, because it refers to a unique strength that dramatically impacts everyone it touches. In fact, in the ancient world, meekness was considered to be a high and noble ideal that people aspired to attain in life!The word “meekness” is the Greek word prautes, which describes a person who is forbearing, patient, and slow to respond in anger or a strong-willed person who has learned to submit his will to a higher authority. This isn’t a weak person; it’s a controlled person. A meek individual may possess a firm will and a powerful character, and he may have his own strong opinions. However, he has fundamentally learned how to bring his will under control. When confronted by an injurious situation, a meek person doesn’t react with a rash or angry outburst, flying into a rage and throwing a temper tantrum. Instead he responds with kindness, gentleness, mildness, or even friendliness.In rare instances, the word prautes (“meekness”) was used in Classical Greek literature to describe wild animals that had become tame because the word correctly conveys the idea of a wild, fierce will being brought under control. Thus, the meaning of this word extends to the idea of an individual who remains in control of himself in the face of insults or injuries. In the Greek language, the word prautes also conveys the idea of a high and noble ideal to be aspired to in one’s life.In addition, the word prautes was used in a medical sense to denote soothing medication to calm the angry mind. Thus, we see that a meek person doesn’t project the countenance of one who is offended, upset, angry, or reactive to insults or injuries. Instead, his response is so gentle and mild that it acts as a soothing medicine for an angry or upset soul in an unsettling situation.The flesh loves to rage out of control, but “meekness” makes you careful and controlled even in difficult circumstances. Instead of flying into a rage and throwing a temper tantrum at every perceived slight, you’re able to remain silent and keep your emotions and temper in check. Your very presence will become God’s soothing medication for angry, upset people, and you will impart peace to situations that previously were unsettling and unstable. And if you find yourself in a situation that you fiercely believe is wrong, you’re still able to remain silent until the appropriate moment to speak or until you’ve been asked for your opinion. You know how to control yourself and your emotions.Last in Paul’s list of Christ-like attitudes is the word “longsuffering.” This is a translation of the Greek word makrothumia, which is a compound of the words makros and thumos. The word makros indicates something that is long, distant, far, or remote. The word thumos is often translated anger, but it also embodies the idea of a strong and growing passion about something. When the two words are compounded, they form the word makrothumia, which refers to the patient restraint of anger, longsuffering, forbearance, or patience.The idea of makrothumia, or “longsuffering,” can be compared to a candle with a very long wick that allows it to burn for a long time. In a similar way, a person who is longsuffering is ready to forbear and patiently wait for people to “come around,” listen to counsel, make progress, and ultimately implement change in their lives. Walking in makrothumia is a part of our Christian responsibility. We have an obligation before God not to be short-tempered with people who struggle or fail. Instead, we are to forbear with them and help them succeed!Long suffering is so different from the way the flesh wants to react. Flesh gets easily angered, blows up, loses its temper, says things it later regrets, and doesn’t want to give the same mercy it demands from others. That is the exact opposite of the response God wants us to have when facing difficult situations. In fact, He commands us to make long suffering a key characteristic in our lives!This one verse holds so much insight into the question that we need to answer before God: What areas of my life need to be adjusted so they more accurately represent the attitude of Jesus Christ? Any or all of these qualities we discussed above may represent some of those areas that need to be adjusted in our lives. The good news is that the Holy Spirit lives in us, and each character trait discussed today is a fruit He wants to produce in our lives. All He needs is our cooperation.So I encourage you: Make the decision today to yield to the Holy Spirit on a continual basis, and allow Him to produce these Christ-like attitudes inside you!