#we are not their idea of Christian and unless we change our fundamental beliefs we will never be Christian | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

heavenaintaniceplace · 3 years ago

Text

so i found my mother’s copy of the jw (new world translation) bible and i decided to yoink that shit for disposal but not before i realized there is a lot of lines highlighted in the book from when she was being manipulated by the jw lady that convinced her to do “bible study” for years. and what do you know if the lines the lady had my mother highlight weren’t the same lines that jws use to justify their cult beliefs! all the lines are cherry picked, no actual study, just the lady manipulating and priming her to accept their beliefs by presenting so called “biblical proof.” so here is some of the things that stand out before i finally rip this thing to shreds and through it away.

literally the whole book replaces every instance of the tetagrammaton with “jehovah” because they want people to believe its been “removed from the bible thousands of times because they don’t want you to know the true name of god”. the whole thing is translated with an agenda to make them look right and everyone else wrong and to make people believe they have some secret hidden knowledge (they don’t they’re liars). putting this under a read more because its very long.

heavy TW for everything related ro religious trauma, the jehovah’s witnesses, bible passages and christianity. incredibly long post. i plan on burning the jehovah’s witness copy of the bible, no joke.

the imago dei part of genesis to try and convince her that humans were super special to god

genesis chapter 3, the serpent convincing eve to eat the fruit of knowledge so that she would accept their version of the original sin doctrine and that women are cursed

chapter where cain kills abel to convince her that this was the first murder in human history (obviously incorrect)

highlighted the part where god kills everything on earth with a flood to groom her into expecting god to do it again later and seen as fair and just and part where god “gives” noah every living creature (because fuck other organisms apparently)

part of leviticus where (in their version) theyre like “no soul must eat blood” (what the fuck) to justify not allowing life saving blood transfusions

deuteronomy part about “jehovah being one” to justify being non trinitarian (they don’t believe jesus is god or that the holy spirit is god, this is meant to lure people who are already christians away from their denoms and into theirs)

“thou shall not kill” is highlighted for some reason and i don’t know why

highlighted job 1:12 to emphasize that they believe satan is in control of the world because god allows it and job 26:7 that has a note saying “the earth hangs there” when talking about sheol to convince her of where earth is relative to “heaven” and using a bunch of “face of the waters” creationist language to make it vague as possible. job 27:5 to make her believe that “no one is righteous” and that saying so is sinful

part in psalms that assures that “wicked people will be no more if you just wait a little while longer” (this is the apocalypse imminent narrative they use to groom people with fear of dying or leaving but also to get them warmed up to the idea of mass death). “the righteous will inherit the earth and live forever” narrative so they believe that jws will live on earth forever after being resurrected while everyone else (whos not a jw) is killed by god

psalms 91 to drive home the fact that these people think theyre invincible in every meaning of the word, to natural disasters and disease etc

proverbs 6 part about “false witnesses”. jws believe that three jehovah’s witnesses have to be present to verify that a crime (like domestic or sexual abuse) actually happened or the governing body and elders don’t care. literally. the “false witness” narrative is used against survivors and people they want to silence in their organization and emphasizes how much jehovah hates “false witnesses” aka people brave enough to talk and victims

proverbs 12:18 about “wise and unwise tongues”, basically anyone that speaks out against the jws are “unwise” and harmful

proverbs 22 about raising children (”train up a child”, if you don’t know it already this is a child abuser dog whistle) that implies that indoctrination will last until adulthood if done right. this is especially bad because this copy is from the early 2000s when i was in kindergarten. this woman had been lurking on us since i was an infant.

proverbs 27 about how neighbors near is better than brothers far away. the implication here is that fundamentally family who aren’t jws don’t matter

ecclesiates 5. i genuinely think its warning people to not ask too much of god or risk his anger, thats the vibe im getting here because the wording is confusing as fuck

isiah 40:22 trying to hammer in the notion that god is greater than anything especially “worldly” governments (except the governing body ofc /s). isiah 43:10 the “you are my witnesses” to justify the name “jehovah’s witnesses” and shoehorn the idea in

daniel 2:40, the idea of an indescribable kingdom, the whole kingdoms in the “last days” conspiracy they use to convince people the “last days” are coming

matthew 4:8 where jesus is persuaded by satan by offering every kingdom on earth. the point in text is “don’t worship anyone except god” but the point of the jws is that nothing on earth actually matters

matthew 6:9 (nice), the our father, meant to make the reader to ask god to hasten the kingdom of god or as we ex-jws know hasten the apocalypse and the death of people they dont like

matthew 16:24, meant to convince people to leave everything behind and join the jws, “disown yourself” aka “die to yourself” toxic bullshit repackaged

matthew 19:9, to convince people that divorce even in instances of domestic abuse is wrong because the governing body won’t allow it and loves to control women

matthew 24:4-14, “anyone who doesnt speak for the jws is a false prophet” and warms people up to the notion that war is necessary; also that evidence of war is a sign of the “last days” and that this is supposed to be good news. ongoing war and the hope for global genocide is “good news” to them.

matthew 24:21. this one is meant to make people feel the apocalypse could happen at any time and to be afraid of it, a great war is coming and only the “chosen ones” (jehovah’s witnesses) will survive when everyone else dies. there’s a paper bookmark on this page. makes me wonder.

mark 8:34. the “die to yourself” bullshit, the idea that the cross was a “torture stake” because jws believe that wearing crosses is idolatry and they want other people to believe their quirky beliefs so they accept heavier things

matthew 10:28, “anyone who follows jehovah and jesus will literally live forever!” but also that “no one is prepared to leave their family for jesus and thats shameful because you should want to sacrifice your entire family!”

mark 11:24 “anything you pray for earnestly you get”. this is spiritual bypassing btw. and :25 “ask for forgiveness and be automatically forgiven no matter what you did” is also fucked

matthew 15-23: jesus (almost) gets wasted while being crucified etc, not sure why this one is highlighted unless im missing some jw bullshit here

luke 20:27. don’t understand this one but they’re threatening “heavier judgement” on people

john 5:28, promising resurrection through jesus after people die but only for the Good tm people (the jws)

john 6:15. how jesus is about to be arrested but goes to a mountain. dunno why this on is underlined

john 11:24. bringing home the same “jesus will save you from dying if youre a jw” bullshit. john 14:6 “jesus is the ONLY way ever! there can’t be anything else except jesus” indoctrination tailored to make you co-dependent. john 17:3, hook line and sinker of promising resurrection and “eternal life” again

john 17:15. here is the “we aren’t of the World tm” shit meant to make you feel outcast from everyone else who isnt a jw, setting up “the world” (everyone else) as other

acts 15:25. “follow the jw rules because the holy spirit you to”

romans 10:10, spread jw beliefs and witness as much as possible. romans 12:9 “hate everything jehovah hates so you’re not a hypocrite” basically means hate other people the jws don’t approve of

corinthians 6:9 (nice but not so nice this time) “anyone we don’t like won’t inherit the earth” translation: anyone we don’t like won’t survive the apocalypse thats definitely happening soon so always be afraid. “homosexuals” are changed to “men kept for unnatural purposes for this one.” still homophobic.

corinthians 7:6, the idea that everyone has a gift that needs to be exploited and used by the jws

corinthians 15:33. “don’t participate in any activities with any outsiders because it will lead you away from jehovah!! fun is ‘drunkenness’, you’ll loose your resurrection if you do!! non jw people are bad influences!!”

2 corinthians 7:1. your body and flesh is defiled, you need to be cleansed in order to be good

galatians 5:20. “having human emotions is sinful! struggling is sinful! being angry is sinful! having a bad day is sinful!” basically that being human is inherently wrong or something

ephesians 3:14. tries to make people believe everything is owed to god only and that obedience is good so they fall for cult power structures later. 4:28 here is just the top of the page being labeled “new personality” and thats all we need to know about indoctrination and cult personality vs actual personality. also “let not the sun set with you in a provoked state” being used against people still angry about being wronged and hurt by others and its been used against me a lot of times

ephesians 6:4. make sure the jw fathers provide the most discipline to children, literally uses the phrase “mental regulating of jehovah”. it couldn’t be more cult like at this point.

timothy 5:8 makes people believe that men alone are expected to provide and if they don’t they’re worse than “those without faith”. no pressure though!

timothy 6:19. wants people to neglect everything actually happening in favor of the “real life” (”eternal life”) instead and to constantly prepare for that instead of actually living life. dedicate your whole life to jw activities

titus 2. women need to be subjects to their husbands but also homemakers, live to glorify their husband, chaste and definitely not mentally ill or showing any symptoms. what the fuck is titus i never heard of this shit until today.

hebrews 1:7-14, trying to convince people that angels live to serve god but also has some superseccsionist/replacement theology (antisemitism) vibes going on

james 2:23, wants people to believe that god “putting people to the test” is actually a way to become “jehovah’s friend” and that being put to the test (read: suffering) is actually a good thing because it primes them to accept suffering as their fault later on. james 4:7 “everything evil will vanish if you rebuke it long enough!!”

peter 3:9 the “god’s timing is always right” gospel bs and encourages people not to do things themselves but to wait and also that jehovah will be on time when its time to start another global genocide. how encouraging! peter 3:13, the same “end of world near” scare tactic, “new heavens new earth” promise to eradicate everyone the jws dont like as that is jehvoah’s “promise” to the witnesses

1 john 3:8, their version of the original sin doctrine, the devil is the source of all evil scare tactic etc

short detour: every instance of “servant” is replaced with “slave” in this version. it makes me feel ill.

revelations 7:16, wants people to believe that god will take away all their pain and that they won’t need food or water to survive anymore (bullshit). also the jehovah’s witness 144,000 chosen people bullshit is here too but not highlighted

revelations 12:7-13, a depiction fo michael drop kicking satan and the implication that satan has always been in charge and not god because they want people to believe that. also that the devil will fall to earth and try to eat jws

revalations 14-4: virgins get dibs on heaven and god i guess. i dont know what the fuck is going on. 14:6 an angel yelling fear god from above, probably where the jws get most of their apocalyptic imagery from that they use to scare children into believing they could die at any minute

so now that we finally got to the end of that mess, their version of revalations ends with jesus saying “yes, i am coming quickly” and “may the undeserved kindness of jesus christ be with the holy ones.”

joking aside, everything highlighted in this copy of this book has been used against me and my mother for years and is a huge part of the reason i have religious trauma now. everything she was told or encouraged to highlight aided jehovah’s witness indoctrination and propaganda, her own indoctrination and eventually mine which apparently started even earlier than i thought.

#ex christian #haanp.txt #ex jehovah's witness #ex jw #exvangelical #religious trauma

25 notes · View notes

bdsawatsky · 5 years ago

Photo

Of all the objections skeptics raise in relation to faith and God, the problem of suffering has to be the most popular. The line of reasoning skeptics employ is pretty straightforward:

a) If God is all-powerful, then he has the ability to destroy evil and prevent suffering.

b) If God is good, then he should want to destroy evil and prevent suffering.

c) Evil and suffering exist, therefore a good and all-powerful God does not exist.

This sound bite of philosophy has been used repeatedly by those who would discredit belief in God and any religious faith. Atheism’s foremost voice of this generation, Richard Dawkins, has been using this logic for decades now. Long before his most popular work, The God Delusion came out in 2006 he expressed the same frustration in his 1995 book, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life:

In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

Dawkins is pretty honest about how gloomy a godless universe should look. But many philosophers have pushed back against the perspective that Dawkins espouses. Decades ago, men like C.S. Lewis, who himself began as an atheist, were forced to change their perspective when they analyzed the reality of the world around them.

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust…? (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

As I pointed out in my book Unapologetix, prominent atheists have been known make reference to the worms and parasites that sometimes wreak havoc on the human body, asking how a God so intent on beauty and pleasure could possibly allow something so ugly and unpleasant. But it doesn’t take a great philosophical mind to understand that we can only label the worms and parasites as awful in juxtaposition to all of the beauty and pleasure that we enjoy on a regular basis. Neither can we complain about injustice we see in the world, if—as Dawkins says—we have no reason to expect to find rhyme, reason or justice here. No, the average person knows in their heart that the world is fundamentally a good place and that a sense of justice is somehow anchored in each one of us.

So then, back to our first question: If the world is good, and fashioned by a loving, all-powerful God, how do we account for all of the evil and suffering? It is here that I will point out that the atheists’ reasoning (that I outlined above) is flawed. It is not airtight, as it makes logical assumptions. It overlooks the possibility that evil and suffering serve some sort of purpose in the universe, and that God might allow them to exist—at least for a time—in order to accomplish something of even greater value.

The biblical device (although I believe it to be more than a device) for making sense of the problem of suffering is the curse that was placed on humankind after our fall into sin. Genesis 3 contains the story that serves as the foundation for understanding life’s most perturbing question—the question of suffering. The ancient narrative explains how the first human beings, Adam and Eve, acted on humanity’s behalf and chose to rebel against God, dragging all of humankind into sin. After confronting the man and woman over their sin, God imposed an all-encompassing curse upon them and upon the physical creation, a curse that would include everything from pain, to disease to death. A bit of reflection would lead the reader to conclude that God was making a very powerful statement: The purpose of the curse was to permanently and constantly remind humankind that the world was not right.

It continues to remind us today that the world is not right. According to the biblical narrative, every time you see spots on your apple, experience sickness, encounter a disease or disability, attend a funeral, catch a cold or hear a chid cry—God’s intention is to remind you that this world is messed up and not what he intended. So, when bad things happen, things like COVID-19, we must not fail to see the bigger picture of what God is doing in the world.

Now, it is important to understand that God is not the author of sin; he is perfectly holy and incapable of doing wrong. But in God’s understanding of what is good, freedom is high on the list. Even the Garden of Eden was fashioned in such a way as to give humans a choice of accepting God’s authority or not. Sin is not God’s creation, but true freedom seems to require the possibility of sin.

In the New Testament, Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son demonstrates the same truth. In it we see a son who chooses to rebel against his father, take his inheritance, leave home, and squander his father’s wealth on riotous living. While it broke the father’s heart to let him go, he knew that this was necessary for his son to come to understand the bigger picture. Eventually, the son comes to his senses, returns home, and enjoys a relationship with his father that he never had enjoyed prior.

As a pastor, nothing brings me greater joy than to see people wrestle with the question of suffering and to arrive at a deeper understanding. As students of the Bible come to understand God’s plan for history (often summed up in the words “creation, fall, redemption and restoration”), the sharper students grasp the question that begs to be asked: “Why is God allowing all of this suffering if the end goal is simply to get humankind back to the state of bliss we already enjoyed in the Garden of Eden?” It always brings a smile to my face.

I have come to believe it’s for the experience. Innocence is beautiful, but it’s not the best that can be. The Bible reveals that God’s ultimate desire is to have a perfect relationship with his creation, and the simple fact is, without this experience we call human history, we would never be able to truly appreciate God. Had we lived on in innocence, we could have respected God in the way a child looks up to their father, but we could never have come to appreciate God’s holiness, his value of freedom, his mercy and grace, his patience, and most of all—his love. The prodigal son understood his father in a very different way at the end of the story, and I believe God wants us to come to understand him in a very different way as well.

So why does God allow things like COVID-19? It’s just one more way that he is reminding us that this world is not right, that it’s not what he intended. Viruses are just one more part of the curse that he instituted out of love for us, something that would drive us back to him. When you understand things in this way, COVID-19 serves a very important purpose. It is quite literally intended to make you discover the love of God. Out of context, that may seem backward and cruel. The prodigal son had to sit in the mud with the pigs for a while before he could see it clearly. But he finally got up, shook off the mud, and returned to his father where a celebration like nothing he had ever experienced was waiting for him.

My prayer is that many who are sitting at home with a little extra time to think will ponder these ideas. I hope that you will look around and see how God made our entire human experience reflect these truths. Everything God has made grows and matures. Innocence is beautiful, and there is a time for it, but it doesn’t last forever. Nor should it.

They say that no child appreciates their father or mother until they themselves become one. But with that maturity comes the precious ability to relate to our parents in ways that we never could have as children. Someday God’s children will sit down with him and appreciate him in ways that Adam and Eve never could have. And things like Coronavirus will make sense. In fact, the apostles firmly believed that increased suffering in this life would only make our time with God even more glorious in eternity. That seems like a pretty good thought to hang onto over the upcoming months.

#coronavirus

2 notes · View notes

pamphletstoinspire · 5 years ago

Photo

Learning To Pray Takes Time And Practice Although we do not like to admit it, even to ourselves, we still believe that prayer happens suddenly, or never happens at all. We kid ourselves that saints are born or created by an arbitrary decision of God who every now and then suddenly decides to top up humanity’s quota. This is a comforting idea that we harbor at the back of our minds because it absolves us from any serious effort to live in union with God.

An Alcoholic: A Picture of Us All

The predicament of the alcoholic is but a dramatic ‘blown-up’ picture of us all. The fact that our perilous plight is not so obviously dramatic is a mixed blessing. If it were, it would at least force us without undue delay to see ourselves stripped naked of all falsity and pretension to face stark reality. Then we would come to a moment of decision that we might otherwise cowardly evade, drifting into a life of superficiality, merely existing on the surface of human experience. Often when an alcoholic hits ‘rock bottom’, they become serious about changing their lives by surrendering and dedicating their lives to God through hard work, by practicing new habits.

A friend of mine made no secret of the fact that he was an alcoholic, although he had been ‘dry’ for five months. He was only twenty-six when I met him, but he had concertinaed the sufferings of a lifetime into a period of about five years. He had been through two marriages and was mixed up with a seedy set of degenerates who led him astray. In the end, he broke down under the strain of his lifestyle and took to the bottle. He used to drink between two and three bottles of whiskey a day. In desperation, he went to a local parish priest, who took him to Alcoholics Anonymous which he also attended. The leader of the centre told him there was nothing they could do for him until he reached ‘rock bottom’ and admitted to himself that he was an alcoholic, and absolutely helpless. Then they could step in and begin to help him to help himself. But, until he faced reality and made this admission, they could do nothing. The hardest part was waiting helplessly looking on until he reached the depths. He was given a pamphlet containing the twelve steps of recovering alcoholics. The first was to admit they were powerless to help themselves and their lives had become unmanageable. The second was to come to believe in a power greater than their own which could restore them to sanity. The third was to turn their lives over to God as they understood him. The other steps amplified these and emphasized the need to face up honestly to past faults and try make amends to those they had caused so much suffering.

Space and Time For Prayer

There can be no fresh start, no renewal in the life of any individual, group or community unless we are able to see and admit our own inadequacy and past failures. Once we begin to see, to experience and to admit our weakness, then we can begin to appreciate the fundamental principle of the spiritual life, namely that we cannot go a single step forward without God. The Gospel does not say, ‘Without me, you will not be able to get very far.’ It says, ‘Without me, you can do nothing.’ Without me – nothing!

Which of us would belittle ourselves by going down on our knees to pray unless we are in need of help? Without the basic humility of the little child, we cannot even begin. This is why Jesus said it is as difficult for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Jesus is not just referring to the person with a fat wallet or a big bank balance; he means people who are rich in natural gifts and abilities too, the person with brains or flair, with administrative skills or business insight, with charm or artistic brilliance. None of these riches are evil in themselves – far from it – but they all have the same danger. They can so easily give us a false impression of our own strength, our own importance and personal competence. Who needs God when money will give me all I want? Who needs God’s help when I can do it myself? Riches of any sort obscure the fundamental vision that we are basically weak and incapable of achieving anything lasting or worthwhile without God. We are totally dependent on him for everything. If we do not see this, we are blind, and we will stumble around for a lifetime and never find the right road, never mind enter the Kingdom.

Recognizing our Own Weakness

The recognition of our own weakness is the only way we will come to feel our utter need of God’s help. Building a life of prayer means turning our lifestyle upside down if need be to find the necessary daily time for prayer. Prayer is not just a luxury for priests or religious, or people who happen to have spare time on their hands. It is an absolute necessity for everyone who wants to plunge themselves effectively into the mystery of Christ’s life, to be drawn into the endless ecstasy of life and love that unceasingly surges out of the Son towards the Father. We are filled to the measure of our weakness by the Father’s richness. The more we are filled with his fullness, the more we are lifted up out of ourselves in a self-forgetfulness that enables us to pray properly for the first time. The more we are tangibly immersed in the mystery of God’s love, the more we begin to see that all prayer leads to praise, to give glory to him and to lose ourselves in his inexhaustible goodness.

The trouble is we do not believe this, except as a purely academic principle of theology that we scandalously disregard in our lives. We beat our breasts with a sponge, reach for a drink and nibbles, and slump down in front of the television. If we did believe it, then we would scream out for God’s help; we would go to him, find time to open ourselves to his healing power and urgently create space in our lives for prayer. The space and the time we find in our daily life is the practical sign of our sincere acceptance of our own weakness, and of our total belief in God’s power, which can alone help us. You might say you would like to be a concert pianist or speak fluent French or become a scratch golfer, but I will only believe you mean it when I see you practise for several hours a day. I will take you seriously when I see you hard at it, day after day on the piano, or studying French grammar, or tramping around the golf course. You would hardly meet a Christian, let alone a religious who would not say he or she desired to come closer to God, to become possessed by him and to build up a deeper prayer life. But how can this be believed until a person relentlessly practises prayer, day after day The desire is not enough, any more than are good intentions.

Learning to Pray needs Practice

Learning to pray, learning to open ourselves to God, is like anything else: it needs practice and it takes time. There is no accomplishment of any worth that I know of that you can attain merely by desiring to have it. We think nothing of spending hours a day and working for years to get a degree, pass an examination, or attain certain qualifications, and we quite rightly accept as a matter of course that the time we give and the energy we expend is necessary. Somehow we seem to think that prayer is an exception, but believe me, it is not. Those who wish to succeed in a particular accomplishment have to give hours of time, even if they have flair or genius. Arthur Rubinstein, the concert pianist was arguably the greatest pianist of the last century and yet at the age of eighty-four he admitted that he needed to practise for six hours a day. In his prime, he practised for nine! Although he was a musical genius at the age of three, it took a lifetime to master the techniques necessary to facilitate and maintain the growth of that genius and to enable him to share it with others on the concert platform. The same could be said of hundreds of great artists, performers, athletes and people from all walks of life who reach the top of their particular branch of human achievement. What right have we to imagine that prayer is an exception to the rule. We are supposed to be dedicated to the mastery of the art of arts and at best we drift aimlessly along like half-baked amateurs dabbling in something that demands the full potential of the professional.

The Oasis will become a Fountain

If we are only prepared to give the same daily time to prayer that would be required to reach a fairly reputable standard on the piano, then, in time, our lives will be dramatically and irrevocably changed. We may start with ten minutes a day and gradually extend that period as we master the preliminaries. But as the months go by, the period will gradually extend so that in the end the problem will be to restrain rather than prescribe a minimum time. If all goes well, the prayer that starts and develops at set times ought to gradually filter through into the rest of the day. In the end, it will become co-extensive with all and everything we do. To begin with, the prayer period will be like a desert, dry, arid and barren. But it will eventually become an oasis in our lives that we cannot do without. However, that is not the end. It is only the beginning. In the end, the oasis will become a fountain that will well up and brim over to irrigate the whole of our lives, as ‘the prayer without ceasing’ transforms our daily spiritual lives enabling us to say with him, ‘It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me’.

DAVID TORKINGTON

#learning to pray

2 notes · View notes

thevividgreenmoss · 6 years ago

Text

...Anyone who knew Eqbal in conditions of struggle knew subliminally that his loyalty and solidarity were unquestionable. He was a genius at sympathy. When he used the pronoun "we," you knew that he spoke and acted as one of us, but never at the expense either of his honesty or of his critical faculties, which reigned supreme. This is why Eqbal came as close to being a really free man as anyone can be.

This isn't to say that he was indifferent to the problems of others, or blessed in that he didn't have problems of his own. This was very far from true. But he did give one the impression that he was always his own man, always able to think and act clearly for himself and, if asked, for others. His subcontinental origins in Bihar and Lahore steeped him both in the travails of empire and in the many wasteful tragedies of decolonization, of which sectarian hatred and violence, plus separatism and partition, are among the worst.

Yet retrospective bitterness at what the white man wrought and at what his fellow Indians and Pakistanis did were never part of Eqbal's response. He was always more interested in creativity than in vindictiveness, in originality of spirit and method than in mere radicalism, in generosity and complexity of analysis over the tight neatness of his fellow political scientists. The title of one of his most spirited essays, on Regis Debray, was entitled "Radical but Wrong."

When I dedicated my book Culture and Imperialism to him, it was because in his activity, life, and thinking Eqbal embodied not just the politics of empire but that whole fabric of experience expressed in human life itself, rather than in economic rules and reductive formulas. What Eqbal understood about the experience of empire was the domination of empire in all its forms, but also the creativity, originality, and vision created in resistance to it. Those words-" creativity, " "originality," "vision"-were central to his attitudes on politics and history.

Among Eqbal's earliest writings on Vietnam was a series of papers on revolutionary warfare which was intended as a refutation of standard American doctrine on the subject. U.S. counterinsurgency experts see in Vietnamese resistance a sort of conspiratorial, technically adept, communist and terrorist uprising, which can be defeated with superior weapons, clear-cut pragmatic doctrines, and the relentless deployment of overwhelming military force. What Eqbal suggested was a different paradigm: the revolutionary guerrilla as someone with a real commitment to justice who has the support of her or his people, and who is willing to sacrifice for the sake of a cause or ideology that has mobilized people. What counterinsurgency doctrine cannot admit is that the native elites whose interests are congruent not with their country's but with those of the United States are not the people to win a revolutionary war. In confronting the arch-theorist of this benighted view-none other than Samuel Huntington-Eqbal. Put it this way:

In underdeveloped countries the quiescence which followed independence is giving way to new disappointments and new demands which are unlikely to be satisfied by a politics of boundary management and selective cooptation-a fact which the United States, much like our ruling elites, is yet unable or unwilling to perceive. There is an increasingly perceptible gap between our need for social transformation and America's insistence on stability, between our impatience for change and America's obsession with order, our move toward revolution and America's belief in the plausibility of achieving reforms under the robber barons of the "third world," our longing for absolute national sovereignty and America's preference for pliable allies, our desire to see our national soil freed of foreign occupation and America's alleged need for military bases.... As the gap widens between our sorrow and America's contentment, so will, perhaps, these dichotomies of our perspectives and our priorities. Unless there is a fundamental redefinition of American interests and goals, our confrontations with the United States will be increasingly antagonistic. In the client states of Asia and Latin America it may even be tragic. In this sense Vietnam may not be so unique. It may be a warning of things to come.

What emerges in these writings is the opposition between conventional and unconventional thought and of course the even deeper opposition between justice and injustice. In his preference for what the unconventional and the just can bring peoples by way of liberation, invigorated culture, and well-being, Eqbal was firm and uncompromising. His distrust for standing armies, frozen bureaucracies, persistent oligarchies allowed no exceptions. Yet at the same time, as he showed in his great essay on Debray, it is not enough to be unconventional if that means having no regard for tradition, for the goods that women and men enjoy, for the great stabilities of human life. Eqbal was shrewd and illusionless enough to realize that overturning societies for the sake of revolution only, without sufficient attention to the fact that human beings also love and create and celebrate and commemorate, is a callous, merely destructive practice that may be radical but is profoundly wrong.

...No one has more trenchantly summarized the various pathologies of power in the third world than Eqbal in the three summary essays he wrote for Arab Studies Quarterly in 1980 and 1981.9 Once again, unlike many of the second-thoughters and post-Marxists who populate the academic and liberal journals today, Eqbal remained true to the ideals of revolution and truer yet to its unfulfilled promise. To have heard him lecture over the years, passionately and sternly, about militarism in the Arab world, in Pakistan, in Algeria and elsewhere, was to have known the high moral position he took on matters having to do with the sanctity and potential dignity of human life either squandered or abused by strutting dictators or co-opted intellectuals. Creativity, vision, and originality of the kind appreciated by Eqbal in his great friend the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz are the measure for political life, not the trappings of honor guards, fancy limousines, and enormously bloated and all-powerful bureaucracies.

The measure is the human being, not the abstract law or the amoral power.

I think it must have been difficult to hold on to such ideals and principles. Most of Eqbal's written work, and indeed his activism, took place in dark times. Not only did he take full stock of the devastations of imperialism and injustice all over the globe, but in particular he more eloquently than anyone else inventoried the particular sadness and low points reached by Islamic cultures and states. Yet even then he managed to remind us that what he mourned is no mere religious or cultural fanaticism, as it is usually misrepresented in the West, but a widespread ecumenical movement. Moreover, though not an Arab himself, Eqbal reminded Arabs that Arabism, far from being a narrow-based nationalism, is quite unique in the history of nationalisms because it tried to connect itself beyond boundaries. It came close to imagining a universal community linked by word and sentiment alone. Anyone who is an Arab in his feelings, in his language and his culture, is an Arab. So a Jew is an Arab. A Christian is an Arab. A Muslim is an Arab. A Kurd is an Arab. I know of no national movement which defined itself so broadly.

In such a situation and with such a heritage, Eqbal saw the degradation of ideas and values that grip Arabs and Muslims alike. Let me quote him again. This is in the aftermath of the Gulf Way in 1993:

We live in scoundrel times. This is the dark age of Muslim history, the age of surrender and collaboration, punctuated by madness. The decline of our civilization began in the eighteenth century when, in the intellectual embrace of orthodoxy, we skipped the age of enlightenment and the scientific revolution. In the second half of the twentieth century, it has fallen. I have been a lifelong witness to surrender, and imagined so many times-as a boy in 1948, a young man in 1967 ... and approaching middle age in 1982-that finally we have hit rock bottom, that the next time even if we go down we would manage to do so with a modicum of dignity. Fortunately, I did not entertain even so modest an illusion from Saddam Hussein's loudly proclaimed 'mother of battles."

This on the one hand and on the other the multiple degradations of what he once called the fascism and separatis clearly identifiable, seemingly hostile but symbiotically linked trends, in his Pakistan. Former Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his family, former president General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, and their coteries plundered the land, demoralized the population. They tried to subdue the country I s insurrectionary constituent cultures and failed, but at the price of more blood and treasure. And everywhere, as throughout the Muslim world, they provoked, if they did not actually cause, the rise of Islamism, which as a secularist Eqbal always deplored.

But ever the fighter and activist, he did not submit in resignation. He wrote more and more in earnest and in 1994 undertook his grand project of founding a new university in Pakistan-Khaldunia, aptly named after the great Arab historian and founder of sociology, Ibn Khaldun. In this project and his enthusiasm for it, Eqbal was no Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, but like Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci, he took as his motto "Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. This was part of the man's rareness, knowing how to rescue the' best available in a tradition without illusion or melodramatic self-dramatization. For him, Islam, Arabism, and American idealism were treasures to be tapped, despite tyrants like Zia ul-Haq and Henry Kissinger, whose manipulations and cold-blooded policies debase and bring down everything they touch.

Edward Said, Introduction to Eqbal Ahmad’s Confronting Empire

#*#eqbal ahmad #edward said #confronting empire

8 notes · View notes

orodrethsgeek · 7 years ago

Note

hey i’m not tryin to be rude but you do realize not all exclusionists are aphobes right? some are i will not deny that some of them genuinely hate aces (which i don’t support) but most just don’t want cishets in the lgbt community. i’m not attempting to change your views of being an inclusionist i just want you to know

Hey there. There's a very specific, tangible parallel between what you've said here and something I've heard elsewhere, so I'm going to share it with you.I used to be part of an evangelical Christian church that preached strict adherence to the Bible. They weren't overtly fundamentalist, but they were very conservative. And they hated queer people.Except they didn't say they hated queer people. They would never have claimed to be homophobic. Instead they said things like, "We disagree with their lifestyle choices," or, "We hate the sin, not the sinner," or a dozen other things. They didn't hate queer people, you understand, there was just no place for them in God's kingdom—not unless they denied a fundamental part of their being."Most exclusionists don't hate aces, we just don't want them in our community."But the thing is, no matter how the church dressed it up in platitudes of "we just don't agree with their lifestyle," the fact is they hated queer people. They opposed their rights to live peaceably, visibly, on the same level as straight people. And it's the same with exclusionists. You can't profess not to hate someone while at the same time doing everything you can to slam the doors of community in their faces and insisting they don't belong here.Aroaces are part of the queer community. They don't need anyone's permission. They're here, they're queer, and exclusionists are going to have to get the fuck over it. Aroaces are recognized by official LGBTQA+ organizations around the world. They helped build the queer community. And while I'm here, I'm also going touch on this idea that exclusionists don't want "cishets" in the community. "Cishet" is a term coined to refer to those with full access to cis, heterosexual privilege. Aroace people are not cishet because they do not have access to these privileges. Aces do not experience sexual attraction, they cannot be heterosexual. It's literally in the name. Aros do not experience romantic attraction, an assumed part of the heterosexual experience. They are not cishet.So no, I don't realize that "not all exclusionists are aphobes." They are. They're just trying to dress it up and make it sound pretty. And the saddest thing is, it's worked. There are a lot of young queer people on tumblr preaching against their aroace siblings because someone dressed hatred up in progressive language and "cishet" hysteria. And I do hope exclusionists rethink their beliefs. The queer community can't afford to be taking potshots at its own members with the way the world's been heading.

27 notes · View notes

d33-alex · 6 years ago

Text

Jordan Peterson and Conservatism's Rebirth

The psychologist and YouTube star has brought the concepts of order and tradition back to our intellectual discourse.

Jordan Peterson doesn’t seem to think of himself as a conservative. Yet there he is, standing in the space once inhabited by conservative thinkers such as G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr. and Irving Kristol. Addressing a public that seems incapable of discussing anything but freedom, Mr. Peterson presents himself unmistakably as a philosophical advocate of order. His bestselling book, “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos,” makes sense of ideas like the “hierarchy of place, position and authority,” as well as people’s most basic attachments to “tribe, religion, hearth, home and country” and “the flag of the nation.” The startling success of his elevated arguments for the importance of order has made him the most significant conservative thinker to appear in the English-speaking world in a generation.

Mr. Peterson, 56, is a University of Toronto professor and a clinical psychologist. Over the past two years he has rocketed to fame, especially online and in contentious TV interviews. To his detractors, he might as well be Donald Trump. He has been criticized for the supposed banality of his theories, for his rambling and provocative rhetoric, and for his association with online self-help products. He has suffered, too, the familiar accusations of sexism and racism.

From what I have seen, these charges are baseless. But even if Mr. Peterson is imperfect, that shouldn’t distract from the important argument he has advanced—or from its implications for a possible revival in conservative thought. The place to begin, as his publishing house will no doubt be pleased to hear, is with “12 Rules for Life,” which is a worthy and worthwhile introduction to his philosophy.

Departing from the prevailing Marxist and liberal doctrines, Mr. Peterson relentlessly maintains that the hierarchical structure of society is hard-wired into human nature and therefore inevitable: “The dominance hierarchy, however social or cultural it might appear, has been around for some half a billion years. It’s permanent.” Moreover, young men and women (but especially men) tend to be healthy and productive only when they have found their place working their way up a hierarchy they respect. When they fail to do so, they become rudderless and sick, worthless to those around them, sometimes aimlessly violent.

In viewing political and social hierarchies as inevitable, Mr. Peterson may seem to be defending whoever happens to be powerful. But he’s doing nothing of the kind. He rejects the Marxist claim that traditional hierarchies are only about the self-interested pursuit of power. Human beings like having power, Mr. Peterson acknowledges. Yet the desire for it also drives them to develop the kinds of abilities their societies value. In a well-ordered society, high status often is a reward conferred for doing things that actually need to be done and done well: defending the state, producing things people need, enlarging the sphere of knowledge.

Mr. Peterson does not deny the Marxist charge that society oppresses individuals. “Culture is an oppressive structure,” he writes. “It’s always been that way. It’s a fundamental, universal existential reality.” But he breaks with prevailing political thought when he argues that the suffering involved in conforming to tradition may be worth it. When a father disciplines his son, he interferes with the boy’s freedom, painfully forcing him into accepted patterns of behavior and thought. “But if the father does not take such action,” Mr. Peterson says, “he merely lets his son remain Peter Pan, the eternal Boy, King of the Lost Boys, Ruler of the non-existent Neverland.”

Similarly, Mr. Peterson insists it is “necessary and desirable for religions to have a dogmatic element.” This provides a stable worldview that allows a young person to become “a properly disciplined person” and “a well-forged tool.”

Yet this is not, for Mr. Peterson, the highest human aspiration. It is merely the first necessary step along a path toward maturity, toward an ever more refined uniqueness and individuality. The individuality he describes emerges over decades from an original personality forged through painful discipline. The alternative, he writes, is to remain “an adult two-year old” who goes to pieces in the face of any adversity and for whom “softness and harmlessness become the only consciously acceptable virtues.”

Like other conservative thinkers before him, Mr. Peterson’s interest in tradition flows from an appreciation of the weakness of the individual’s capacity for reason. We all think we understand a great deal, he tells his readers, but this is an illusion. What we perceive instead is a “radical, functional, unconscious simplification of the world—and it’s almost impossible for us not to mistake it for the world itself.”

Given the unreliability of our own thinking, Mr. Peterson recommends beginning with tried and tested ideas: “It is reasonable to do what other people have always done, unless we have a very good reason not to.” Maturity demands that we set out to “rediscover the values of our culture—veiled from us by our ignorance, hidden in the dusty treasure-trove of the past—rescue them, and integrate them into our own lives.”

In Western countries, that effort at rediscovery leads to one place. “The Bible,” Mr. Peterson writes, “is, for better or worse, the foundational document of Western civilization.” It is the ultimate source of our understanding of good and evil. Its appearance uprooted the ancient view that the powerful had the right simply to take ownership of the weak, a change that was “nothing short of a miracle.” The Bible challenged, and eventually defeated, a world in which the murder of human beings for entertainment, infanticide, slavery and prostitution were simply the way things had to be.

As many readers have pointed out, Nietzsche’s critique of Enlightenment philosophy—he once called Kant “that catastrophic spider”—is everywhere in Mr. Peterson’s thought, even in his writing style. It is felt in his calls to “step forward to take your place in the dominance hierarchy,” and to “dare to be dangerous.” It is felt in risqué pronouncements such as this: “Men have to toughen up. Men demand it, and women want it.”

A famous passage from Nietzsche describes the destruction of the belief in God as the greatest cataclysm mankind has ever faced: “What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing?”

Mr. Peterson chronicles the misery of individuals now drifting through this “infinite nothing.” But he rejects Nietzsche’s atheism, along with the conclusion that we can make our own values. In telling readers to return to the Bible, Mr. Peterson seeks to rechain the earth to its sun. That seems impossible. Yet a vast audience has demonstrated a willingness, at least, to try.

For Mr. Peterson, the death of God was followed inevitably by a quick descent into hell. During the “terrible twentieth century,” as he calls it, “we discovered something worse, much worse, than the aristocracy and corrupt religious beliefs that communism and fascism sought so rationally to supplant.” The Holocaust and the gulag, he argues, are sufficient to define evil for us, and “the good is whatever stops such things from happening.”

That is perfectly good Old Testament-style reasoning. Mr. Peterson adds Christian tropes such as the need for an “act of faith,” an “irrational commitment to the essential goodness” of things, a recognition that although “life is suffering,” sacrificing ourselves, as if on the cross, is pleasing to God.

Mr. Peterson’s intellectual framework has its weaknesses. He invokes recent social science (and its jargon) with a confidence that is at times naive. His often brilliant “12 Rules for Life” is littered with Heideggerian rubbish about “the betterment of Being,” in places where a thinker of Mr. Peterson’s abilities should have seen the need for a more disciplined effort to understand God. He lacks Nietzsche’s alertness to the ways in which the great religious traditions contradict one another, leading their adherents toward very different lives. Thus while Mr. Peterson is quite a good reader of the Bible, it is at times maddening to watch him import alien ideas into scripture—for instance, that the chaos preceding the creation was “female”—so as to fill out a supposed archetypal symmetry.

Nonetheless, what Mr. Peterson has achieved is impressive. In his writings and public appearances, he has made a formidable case that order—and not just freedom—is a fundamental human need, one now foolishly neglected. He is compelling in arguing that the order today’s deconstructed society so desperately lacks can be reintroduced, even now, through a renewed engagement with the Bible and inherited religious tradition.

Before Mr. Peterson, there was no solid evidence that a broad public would ever again be interested in an argument for political order. For more than a generation, Western political discourse has been roughly divided into two camps. Marxists are sharply aware of the status hierarchies that make up society, but they are ideologically committed to overthrowing them. Liberals (both the progressive and classical varieties) tend to be altogether oblivious to the hierarchical and tribal character of political life. They know they’re supposed to praise “civil society,” but the Enlightenment concepts they use to think about the individual and the state prevent them from recognizing the basic structures of the political order, what purposes they serve, and how they must be maintained.

In short, modern political discourse is noteworthy for the gaping hollow where there ought to be conservatives—institutions and public figures with something important to teach about political order and how to build it up for everyone’s benefit. Into this opening Mr. Peterson has ventured.

Perhaps without fully intending to do so, he has given the dynamic duo of Marxism and liberalism a hard shove, while shining a light on the devastation these utopian theories are wreaking in Western countries. He has demarcated a large area in which only conservative political and social thought can help. His efforts have provided reason to believe that a significant demand for conservative ideas still lives under the frozen wastes of our intellectual landscape.

If so, then Mr. Peterson’s appearance may be the harbinger of a broader rebirth. His book is a natural complement to important recent works such as Ryszard Legutko’s “The Demon in Democracy,” Patrick Deneen’s “Why Liberalism Failed” and Amy Chua’s “Political Tribes.” Representing divergent political perspectives, these works nevertheless share Mr. Peterson’s project of getting past the Marxist and liberal frameworks and confronting our trained incapacity to see human beings and human societies for what they really are. As the long-awaited revival of conservative political thought finally gets under way, there may be much more of this to come.

by Yoram Hazony, The Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2018 www.wsj.com/articles/jordan-peterson-and-conservatisms-rebirth-1529101961

Mr. Hazony is author of “The Virtue of Nationalism,” forthcoming Sept. 4.

#psychology #philosophy #conservatism

2 notes · View notes

gduncan969 · 4 years ago

Text

Buying a Stamp Under Modern Monetary Theory

Isaiah 55:1-3a “Ho! Everyone who thirsts, Come to the waters; And you who have no money, Come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And let your soul delight itself in abundance. Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live;..”

My last blog described how the Marxist-based “Critical Race Theory” is permeating every nook and cranny of western culture including politics, academia, institutions, churches and large corporations and how it is radically altering our view of white society, accusing it of widespread systemic racism and white supremacy. In its wake, woke-ism and cancel culture are becoming mainstream and demanding that the white races make amends for the injustices our supposed racism has inflicted on people of colour and these amends must include financial compensation along with fundamental changes to what we teach in our schools, who we hire in our industries, how we police our societies and how we are governed. This, in itself, is nothing more than racism against whites in our western, multi-racial societies. Other branches of the more general Critical Theory are spreading their poison into science and mathematics as seen in several US states who are encouraging their teachers to correct the white supremacy that they say exists in the teaching of mathematics where students are being asked to “show their work” to explain their (wrong) answers rather than being given what Critical Race Theory demands: an opportunity to explain either verbally or through multimedia projects, not using words or numbers, how they arrived at the wrong answer to the question— and by the way, there are no “wrong” answers! Allowing Critical Theory to advance unhindered will inevitably see the bible banned as “hate literature” because it places responsibility for wrong-doing on the individual, not the society and also for what it clearly says about abortion, marriage, homosexuality, gender identity and the many other currently promoted immoral behaviours.

What is “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT)?

I am no expert on money-management or economic theories but like most of us, I have watched governments spend themselves into oblivion and have asked myself where is all this money coming from to finance their largesse, most of which seems to have more to do with getting re-elected than their globalist slogan of “build back better”? While Critical Theory seeks to destroy the biblical foundations on which Canadian and other western societies are founded there’s another theory, much less known to most, that is equally undermining these foundations, one that is being widely adopted among the richest nations in the world: “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT). MMT is revolutionizing how national governments treat government debt and it does so by a sleight-of-hand mechanism that is both complex and confusing to the rest of us who earn our living by paying our way. All of us raised in responsible families learned from an early age that you can’t continue to spend money you don’t have. At some point the borrowing has to end and the debt has to be repaid or serious consequences will result such as bankruptcy and the repossession of all your goods, house included! That threat keeps most borrowers very careful about how much debt they are willing to take on and how much monthly payment they are willing to live with based on their income. Sadly, we have all assumed our governments think likewise but under MMT that is no longer the case.

News media have been warning us for years that our national debt is climbing into the stratosphere and is unsustainable. Currently for Canada, it sits at $2.43 trillion dollars ($2,434,000,000,000) or $64,087 per man, woman and child—and it is still growing! In the US, the national debt is at least $24 trillion and is also still growing. How can this be and how will it ever be repaid? To understand how any government can spend trillions of dollars they don’t have on social programs they can’t afford when they are already up to their eyeballs in debt, the answer is MMT. MMT explains where all this extra money comes from but doesn’t explain how will it be repaid without having to tax the people to death? MMT’s answer is simple: governments can print the money they want to spend! To the layman’s eye—and that’s you and me—that’s all there is to it, they throw a switch in the printing room and the money rolls of the presses in beautiful sheets of brand new bills ready to be used to pay for all those new social programs they promised their voters. Of course, it’s not that simple but how can they possibly get away with this without incurring the same devastating results that befell, for instance, Germany after World War I. Like many countries before and since, they tried to print their way out of debt but failed miserably and the currency collapsed as the picture above shows, a 200 pfennig postage stamp, originally costing about two deutschmarks, cost 2 million marks after the collapse! My father visited Germany in the 1930's and told me he could have lived for a month trading the 200 cigarettes he purchased on the ferry crossing the English Channel! Cigarettes were much more valuable than deutschmarks! Germany ultimately found a solution to its woes in a man called Adolf Hitler and the way the world economy is headed, the world’s solution will be the anti-Christ! Today, hyperinflation and collapsed currencies continue to ravage bankrupt economies in places like Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Lebanon but why is it their printing presses failed while those in the rich nations continue to succeed? What is the secret to their success?

Like Critical Theory, MMT is a socialist-based approach to economics and unsurprisingly, its current leading figure in the USA is Stephanie Kelton who served as Bernie Sanders’ chief economic adviser in the last US election. If you Google the term MMT, it explains the theory as follows (I’ve added some explanations for the terms used):

“MMT is a heterodox (meaning “not conforming with orthodox standards or beliefs”—Christians take note!) macroeconomic (country-wide) framework that says sovereign countries who control their own currencies like the U.S., Canada and others which spend, tax, and borrow in their own fiat currencies (meaning “a government-controlled currency that is not backed by a commodity such as gold and not operationally constrained by revenues when it comes to federal government spending”).”

Are you now scratching your head and utterly confused? Then to put it simply, “such governments do not rely on taxes or borrowing for spending since they can print as much as they need since they are the only issuers of their currency. Since their budgets aren't like yours and mine, their policies need not be shaped by fears of rising national debt.” This is A PERFECT DESCRIPTION OF WHAT IS NOW HAPPENING IN CANADA AND AMONG THE G7 NATIONS. “MMT challenges conventional beliefs about the way the government interacts with the economy, the nature of money, the use of taxes, and the significance of budget deficits. These conventional beliefs, critics say, are a hangover from the gold standard era and are no longer accurate, useful, or necessary. MMT is used to argue for such progressive legislation as universal guaranteed income, universal healthcare in the US and other globalist programs for which governments claim to not have enough money to fund.” These governments are the ones calling for “the great global reset” which will banish money as we know it and replace it with digits in a government-controlled memory bank in the cashless society we are headed into. MMT says governments should not worry about not having the money, all they need to do is print more of it!

Core Principles

“The central idea of MMT is that governments with a government controlled (fiat) currency can and should print (or create with a few keystrokes in today's digital age) as much money as they need to spend because they cannot go broke or be insolvent unless a political decision to do so is taken. Some say such spending would be fiscally irresponsible as the debt would balloon and inflation would skyrocket but according to MMT, large government debt isn't the precursor to collapse we have been led to believe it is (but of course this has not been proven). Countries like the U.S. can sustain much greater deficits without cause for concern and small deficits or surpluses can be extremely harmful and cause a recession since deficit spending is what builds people's savings. MMT theorists explain that debt is simply money the government put into the economy and didn't take back in taxes. They also argue that comparing a government's budgets to that of an average household is a mistake.” If alarm bells are now ringing loud in your head you are not alone but it only gets worse.

Google further adds: “While supporters of MMT acknowledge that runaway inflation is theoretically a possible outcome from such spending, they say it is highly unlikely and can be fought with policy decisions in the future if required. They often cite the example of Japan, which has much higher public debt than the U.S. According to MMT, the only limit the government has when it comes to spending is the availability of real resources, like workers, construction supplies, etc. When government spending is too great with respect to the resources available, inflation can surge if decision-makers are not careful (in other words, if the government pushes too much printed money into the economy and there aren’t enough resources available to spend it on, then the price of those that are available will inflate. The MMT cure for this is to increase taxes). Taxes create an ongoing demand for currency and are a tool to take money out of an economy that is getting overheated. This goes against the conventional idea that taxes are primarily meant to provide the government with money to spend to build infrastructure, fund social welfare programs, etc. "What happens if you were to go to your local IRS office to pay your taxes with actual cash?," wrote MMT pioneer Warren Mosler in his book “The 7 Deadly Frauds of Economic Policy?”. "First, you would hand over your pile of currency to the person on duty as payment. Next, they’d count it, give you a receipt and, hopefully, a thank you for helping to pay for social security, interest on the national debt, and the Iraq war. Then, after you, the taxpayer, left the room, they’d take that hard-earned paper cash you just forked over and throw it in a shredder!" (Why? Because they have nice, clean new bills they’ve just printed.) According to MMT, unemployment is the result of government spending too little while collecting taxes. It says those looking for work and unable to find a job in the private sector should be given minimum-wage, “transition jobs” funded by the government and managed by the local community. This is exactly how President Biden is going to run the American economy. The unemployed would act as a buffer stock in order to help the government control inflation in the economy.” Does this sound all too familiar? If you have been listening to our own Prime Minister or President Biden you might begin to understand where all the money has come from to pay for the pandemic pay-outs and the latest $4 Trillion “infrastructure program” in the US—they are simply printing it!

What’s Wrong With All of This?

The fatal flaw in MMT is the lack of any EXTERNAL standard of value which can be used to measure the relative value of each nation’s currency against that standard. Historically, the external standard was gold and countries could not print paper money unless they had an equivalent amount in gold held in reserve but in 1972 Richard Nixon removed America from the gold standard and freed the US dollar to rise and fall as the world demand determined. The result and because America was the richest economy in the world was that the American dollar became the new world standard to which all other currencies are compared including the Canadian dollar which dropped from par in 1972 to a level of around 61 US cents before climbing back to around 80 cents today. The British pound dropped from around $2.75 to its current level of $1.37. However, the price of gold climbed from $35.00 per ounce to today’s astounding price of US $1735.00 per ounce, clearly indicating gold remains highly trusted as a physical substance of value among the people of the world who refuse to put their trust in digital blips on a computer screen telling them how many dollars it says they possess. The other result is that the US government is now free to print as many trillions of dollars as it wishes because it owns the world standard but watch out, China will soon reach a position to challenge this and potentially collapse the dollar with horrendous consequences for the western economies.

What Does the Bible Say?

If all of the above has you confused and anxious about your financial future, there’s good news: “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4) and “The just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11 and Hebrews 10:38). We are not called to rely on our bank accounts for our sustenance but on our God who is “faithful and true” (Revelation 19:11) and who “will never leave you or forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5) but we had better learn fast what living by faith means before MMT destroys our economies. Jesus never relied on money to accomplish his mission because he never had any and the one time he needed some, he sent Peter fishing to fetch it out of a fish’s mouth. Peter and John didn’t rely on it either and told the crippled man at the gate “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk” (Matthew 17:27). How’s your “such” and how’s mine and does it compare with Peter’s? Isaiah 55:1-3a tells us where our supply is and how much money it will cost us: “Come to the waters; And you who have no money, Come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” The “waters” God calls us to are the waters of the Holy Spirit (John 7:38) that Jesus told us would flow out of everyone who believes in Him. All who have placed their trust in Him have the well of the Holy Spirit within them but many need to pull out the stopper of the natural mind and its worldly thinking that seals the well and allow the Holy Spirit to flow out through them as rivers of living water to provide for themselves, their families and the world around them all that God has promised them.

The question we all need to answer as we face the worst potential economic crash in history is how well have we learned to live by faith and not by sight? How far can we go if we have no money? If our faith is in our bank account or in our government, where then is the Lord Jesus in our scheme of things? Is he simply our “reserve currency” that we keep hidden away just in case or is he the supplier of every need, the author and finisher of our faith? We are entering a time when these scriptures cannot be just words on a page but an every day experience as we learn to walk by faith and not by sight. These verses are commands to LIVE by, not just words to be remembered and my sense of where the world economy is headed tells me we had better start practicing them before it is too late. I don’t for a moment understand all the intricacies of MMT but one look at who started it (Karl Marx), who is pushing it (Bernie Sanders) and the socialist governments that are applying it (Biden) convinces me we are heading into the final days when a quart of wheat or three quarts of barley will cost a day’s wage (Revelation 6:6). Only those practiced in walking by faith will survive so let’s start practicing.

0 notes

lord-wellesbrook-ix · 4 years ago

Text

The Problem with Modern Politics by Me, an unqualified, out of touch late millennial/early gen Z Brit.

Advance warning this is gonna be a long post, essay is below the break for those who care to read.

Ok, good, welcome! So yes, time for some personal details, because apparently such things are crucially important now to what one has to say. I’m 19, I’m white~jewish (ethnically, not religiously. And I list both because the distinction is...spurious at best imo), with some limited asian heritage (grandfather is Burmese, you’d not know it to look at me though). I’m bisexual, with a loving trans boyfriend, tragically kept away from me by that most perfidious of enemies, the atlantic ocean. I used to think I was trans, and started hrt, before deciding against it. I don’t know what my gender identity really is at this point, but I use he/him, and was assigned male at birth. Oh and despite my immediate family having some significant prestige (my dad is a VERY specialised doctor, only 8 people in the country can do what he does), because Britain and NHS, I’m also poor enough that I qualify for financial assistance through uni, and all that other fun stuff, so assign me whatever class you want, but I’ve never really had access to money or the like. All of these factors will undoubtedly somehow colour what my thoughts are.

So! Let’s tackle this on two fronts - My beef with the modern left, my beef with the modern right, and my beef with all the current “alternatives”. The Left Why do you make me hate you so? I want to be able to side with you. Economically, we’re almost perfectly aligned. Fuck big corporations, they abuse their workers, and are broadly detrimental to societal progress by merit of the power they wield. The state should use the money of the wealthiest, to help uplift the poorest, bringing everyone as close to a comfortable range of wealth and living standards as is feasible. Wealth taxes I’m against, if only because I look at things like FIRE with some measure of hope, because I find it infeasible that I’ll be able to work a “proper job” my entire life, and equally infeasible that the state will support me before I’m in my 70s. Unsurprisingly I’m all for trans and lgbt rights, and their advancement is imperative. Likewise racial and ethnic discrimination needs to be combatted (though I have a caveat insofar as how), and linguistic minority rights are ESPECIALLY important (not to out myself as Welsh...). Minimum wages, yes, and higher! Benefits should be more generous and more accessible! All of this! And yet. And, yet. I can never stand with any significant left wing party. Because of how they behave on other fronts. The general solution to racial discrimination seems to be mandates, and quotas, which are just...not a great idea? Because they’ll only work insofar as they are maintained, and at that point you’re not solving it, you’re just leaning on people to make it LOOK like the problem is solved. Instead perhaps, a better system would be something akin to a more continental system. Pictures are banned on CVs, as are any obvious racial or sex or gender markers. Further anonymising most processes, to further make any people making significant choices unable to determine race, sex or gender of the people they’re choosing about, allows for a truly blind process. The same, incidentally, should apply to class distinctions (personal story there to follow, because there class mandates have stabbed me personally).

Moreover, however, both left and right these days seems to be based on these vicious and disgusting ideas of guilt and hatred, only changing who receives them. The modern left want me to hate myself, and hate my country. My skin means that I am somehow inherently advantaged, and thereby everything bad that happens to me is fine, my country has committed sins long before anyone alive today was born, and thereby any bad thing that befalls it is right and good. I am guilty of the crime of...being born a certain way, in a certain place, to certain people, and because of that, because of my privilege, I must apparently have the road of life made that much harder to walk for me. I must be told throughout education that this country is evil, that “Britain” and the “British” are evil, with no consideration for the fact that, well, that’s me. Telling someone that they’re evil as they’re growing up is uhhhh, not exactly a good thing. I believe in this nation that reared me. Moreover I believe in its values, I believe in Britain, and I believe every person should have the right to believe in their country. People as a whole aren’t fundamentally evil. And whilst yes every country has sins, great or small, and Britain’s past leans closer to great, that doesn’t give people the right to try and engender a sort of national self-loathing in the population for it. I won’t venture into America (because America breaks my whole everyone should be proud of their country thing, because a lot of areas should frankly be made independent from the US). And as a part of my...I don’t want to use the terms patriotism or nationalism because both have been massively tainted by groups trying to claim them for years now, but as a part of these beliefs, I stand with the British monarchy. Hell, I actually argue they should be allowed slightly greater freedoms. That they should be allowed to speak out when they are slandered (naming no self-entitled actresses), and equally, that they should be allowed to have some limited vocalisation of other political opinions. We let celebrities do it today, and they influence elections far more than the crown could ever hope to. And let’s look at things that Chucky boy, our next king unless they do something VERY silly and skip him, has gotten into trouble for speaking about: Not wanting brutalist modern architecture, which has actually been proven to make for housing that doesn’t last as long, and negatively impacts mental health. And Being an environmentalist.

And

Wanting this country to treat the mentally ill better. Ah...such controversial, evil points, made by a despotic tyrant princ-oh wait no they’re just valid things. I don’t want them to be given the power to ENFORCE their ideas, that way lies absolutism, which runs against the ideas of a constitutional monarchy. But let them speak, there are people who speak freely with greater sway and influence than they could ever have, and far less accountability.

The Right

Oh boy, oh boy. Economically villainous. I despise nearly every economic ideal they stand for. They hurt the poor to help the rich, and just like the left, screw those in the middle. All I can credit them for on that front is that they don’t have as much of a tendency to support ugly, cheap mass housing, but only because they instead support no housing.

Socially...ugh. I look at the modern right as a two headed beast there. There are those like those on the left, who hate Britain, but instead of just hating us and wanting some vague utopia, they hate us and want us to become a corporate hellhole like america, which is arguably worse.

Then there’s the others. Those who take my ideals and corrupt them. Racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, rinse and repeat, and yes I know this is the hazard inherent in enjoying tradition and one’s nation anywhere, but can those traditions not be adapted? Anglicanism is already christianity minus any spine or sense of self, let it allow gays and trans people and all of that. Also uh yeah, don’t be racist. I don’t really know how to phrase that in any other way because...it’s not hard. Just don’t be racist. Treat people as people, not as their race. Do not treat me any different for being a jew, or having an asian grandfather, do not treat someone differently for being a person of colour, do not treat someone different for the circumstances of their birth, quite simply put. Alternatives

So, the non mainstream (LIBLABCON) parties? Let’s see.... UKIP/Reform - Ah racism, fuck off. Plaid - Ah, vote to...leave the country I love? And to be run from Cardiff by people like Drakeford, or Woods, or really any of the major players in modern welsh politics? No. Any flavour of communist - Last I checked they all want me to hate myself, so nah. Greens - Cool. You still want me to hate myself, and have really dumb economic ideas, but you’re a one issue party and I support that issue, so tentatively the lesser of all the evils. Idk why I had this rant, I am just very upset. There is no voice for people like me, and it seems there never will be. And I’m nowhere near rich enough to start a party to become that voice.

0 notes

eksbdan-blog · 5 years ago

Photo

New Post has been published on https://passingbynehushtan.com/2019/10/31/man-atonement-sins-of-the-world/

How Can a Man Atone for the Sins of the World Through His Own Sacrifice? Only One Way. Part 4. The Man.

This is an article in a series. Please see:

How Can a Person Atone in a Sacrifice for the Sins of the World? Only One Way. Part 1. How Can a Man Atone for the Sins of the World By His Own Sacrifice? Only one way. Part 2. The Messianic Secret How Can a Man Atone for the Sins of the World Through His Own Sacrifice? Only one way. Part 3. Preparation for Sacrifice.

The Sins of the World, A Man and a Cross. How? Two Things

Now, this Messianic secret starts with the two elements I mentioned, which make up the entire image of the Cross: at its bare minimum, stripped of identity and context, a vertical piece of wood, and a man hanging on it.

As I implied before, we start with this by asking about the function of Jesus’s symbolic method: if this is the core, the central and vital symbol of the Christian message, and if Christianity has become a Holy or an evil organization, would we expect this one to reveal it? Yes, we would. Because it is of such value, this would represent a means of protecting the message from being pointedly attacked and lost to those who are always in the world looking for it represents a specific understanding of how redemption works.

I want to speak first on this nature of biblical symbolism as well its means of protection before this man and Cross represents a fundamental specific understanding of God’s mind. If the formal container of the meaning of the Cross is revelational, and this is invaluable, just as something about it which makes it as powerful revealed as powerful concealed, in the following way.

If a plan is said ordained by God, it not only illogical but blasphemous to assume this depiction of Christ on the Cross is different, or any less revelatory, than its meaning. The attachment of meaning is not gratuitous but as an irresistible consequence of the image. The image in its primary function is for easy access to a precise meaning, which is God’s plan, but only within some mind with as unhypocritical a motive to see it as God’s motive is in preserving it from others.

This is why the message of the Cross is primarily one about the nature of morality because the whole display of the Cross is a spiritual movement to expose spiritual reality, not a physical movement for physical reality. If moral movement is spiritual, and the only kind that counts, I ask in what way would we best legally deal with it if not by our equitable, rational, and fair interpretation? Interpretation of a symbol depicting, whether we want to believe it or not, the single most pressing and implicating religious event in human history?

Why this must contain this deep meaning with life and death implications is because true revealed faith is no such thing if not disclosing of transcendent secrets. Christian people who insist that it is a revealed faith but not disposed toward treating these issues with the gravity that this category implies is not from the start engaging in morality. And for them to only admit that Christ on the Cross in the act follows the same lower form of morality is to admit it represents nothing more than something like “love” or “obedience” or “death.” To assume its accidental functionality or its intentional one of nothing more than another common symbol is the quintessential moral failure. I do not suggest that those who belong to God are only those who understand perfectly, but means that, through the resistant noise produced by these others, they want to, have an overarching concern for it and have enough despite the world’s downgrading.

The Academy finds it divisive and fundamentalist to bind morality and the handling of religious symbolism in this way. The tendency is to treat such symbols as merely incidental to its age and culture, making their meaning malleable, academic, and disposable. But this is no choice for moral spirituality if the claim is that God designed and delivers a kind of communication as a means of revealing his proprietary knowledge, which would be ageless by definition. No matter who you are, your responsibility is to assume the possibility that spiritual life is infinitely more important than physical life. Your ultimate function in life may be the examination and testing of the world faiths, which claim a special revelation from God. Your spiritual morality may be the only kind upon which qualifies any conception of spiritual existence after death. To proceed in, without bias, hypocrisy, and dissembling, that potential toward a decision.

A true revelatory document is one by definition hidden and revealed, with the former representing the symbol and the latter representing its meaning. If a claimed message from God rests only on your faith in some ancient sage’s confidence, and not on a received truth which he delivers from God and subsequently revealed as true historically, this is not a revelation. This the making of a divine symbol to mean another common symbol, not divine knowledge and meaning. God shows himself in some fashion to the subject, which is scriptural and direct and which manifests itself as a possible product only of the mind of God, not man. In reciprocation, you demonstrate the highest kind of morality by its honest handling, since God’s informational object of handling is the highest transcendent value, and the place of its processing is the most valuable dimension of the individual.

Downgrading Made Simple

I am sure most of you are aware after being exposed to the offered hermeneutical and interpretive choices of the World that there is continuously some attempt to retool biblical types, for example, into non-revelatory things. This retooling s an attempt to circumvent this original, unavoidable definition of morality into a kind of lower value. You lower the symbols means of demonstration in a lower place of expression so that when thinking about goodness, we can think of ourselves there without the threat of very harsh, implacable, interdimensional spiritual laws threatening us.

Moses’ serpent on the pole of Numbers 21, for example. The story is that this is not a display of a more significant and later intention of God, but only perhaps for Moses to give a superstitious people hope that God will protect them from serpent bites. Or, we hear, Christ in John 3 did not refer to this serpent on the pole as a type of him, and has no place in his talk with Nicodemus except Jesus just telling him to believe in God and get baptized truly. Or, Moses’ serpent stops at the meaning of “holiness under the appearance of sin.” Or, the Greeks borrowed the image of the serpent in the Staff of Asclepius, the symbol for medicine and healing, and the image means “true healing by God alone.” Christ is “lifted up,” the serpent was “lifted up,” therefore “lifted up” means Christ raised as the cure for sin.

Do I have a problem with any of these? No, not superficially, except for the first and second. They are all the same interpretation, led by an insularity trying to take a meaning of the serpent on the pole only from a range of possibilities for the purpose of uncoiling and pacifying that serpent, so to speak. The serpent is, however, undomesticated forever, and not defanged unless it is allowed to speak for itself.

That irresistible reflex, an aversion to the idea of any particular thing hidden that may jump out, scare and threaten them, which leads their actions in first making it less threatening, is the problem of a priority of self in the face of truth. Who knows what, if they thought God were speaking certain instead of general things about us, he would say about what is really in our hearts? It’s a lot easier to handle the suggestion that “all those who have no faith can’t be saved” than it is “only those who have [Certain kind of faith here] will be.” Sin defines as a priority of fear of a relatively worthless loss over something of infinite value, so you change the language to avoid the clear threat of identifying against something Holy in which you have no visceral interest. At least “faith” remains open only to an unthreatening species.

We do this for the same reason that Vladimir Bukovsky, in his book Judgment in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity, said that the West, particularly the liberal West, never really resisted the evil of the Soviet state, they were complicit.

“The movers and shakers of today have little interest in digging for the truth. Who knows what one may come up with? You may start out with the communists and end up with yourself.”1

In the church, the theologians of today have little interest in digging for the truth about real sin. Who knows with what might come up? You may start with Satan and end up with yourself.

The thought is that Jesus of the Cross is axiomatically a particular revelation of God’s plan and strategy of implementing it. It’s not optional for Christianity as a revealed faith but would crumble without it by the hands of those who must somehow place themselves in exclusive control of transcendent meaning so that the idea of God that occupies their thoughts does not haunt it as well.

That brings us to the why and how of the necessity of using something ambiguous for this particular revelation of God’s plan of redemption, but not vague for a certain, targeted few.

If you have something of value, particularly of the highest possible value, you don’t throw it into the street for anyone to pick up and exhaust according to their desires, but by some means, you put it away. If anyone thinks it’s as valuable and wants it, they must show their belief that it carries the approximate value that its provider ascribes. The key to this analogy is “desires,” so keep that in mind.

If you want a loan at the bank for a business project, you convince them that you know what you’re doing, that you see the value of money, that you already have some means in cash reserve for a possible slow start, show you have a familiarity with the work. You present a business plan to show that you know where you’re going. You may complain that the bank does not just empty its coffers and let it rain down over the city like a ticker-tape parade, or give it to you just because you want it, but the fact is that if you place a value on a thing you don’t treat it like trash, and you are not honest in expecting others to.

God’s currency is existential truth. “Truth” is the currency of our theology, but not “God’s truth” as we conceive it. “God” is one thing, and “truth” is another, and God’s truth is God’s revelation in a historical phenomenon of promise and fulfillment that forever establishes his exclusive authorship. In our theology, ‘God’s truth” means any kind of truth, biblical or not. “God” is therefore made a disposable and weak concept because there is a desire to think of it as unsupportable except by insular subjective and idiosyncratic motives.

Please go to the next page…

The world, including our theology, has access to “truth,” but this only appears to be a value, because it is not a concept formulated with an unavoidable transcendental attachment. The way the world handles the ultimate spiritual bank is they make their own currency, and their own bank, and loan it out to their own people, that don’t place upon it so harsh and strict qualifications.

The currency they exchange and spend is a boon to the world. It finances countless books, lectures, seminaries, emotions, churches, and pious intentions very successfully and lavishly, but only because they can’t get into the other transcendent bank and use its currency of truth, which has a firewall around it which keeps them out.

The only way a real revelation of God is of possible success when given into a world with a majority of people hostile or apathetic to it, but still for a small number who are receptive, is to make sure it gets through to the right people and hide it from the wrong people. The bank hides its money by putting it into safe. With God, he protects it from the wrong people by baiting them with what they really love. Those are the things of the world, mystery, puzzles, work, tantalizing questions, and generally a possible view of transcendence taken for the exclusive service to them and their desires. It superficially looks like the real thing, giving a feeling that they are holding something ultimate, but the comparison stops there. At the same time, this symbol that can signify carnal things to carnal concerns, having the competence to appear holy but is not, is for those looking for God also symbols of things that pertain to eternity, truth, spiritual law, God’s mind and the provably miraculous. The one honestly looking for truth gets it, which is entirely abstract but of life and death importance, and the one looking for other things gets it, which can only fuel carnal ambition and die with them. This accomplishes two things.

One, God’s Word, his message, is preserved untouched for those that will receive it since the carnal majority never know it in order to mount a targeted effort to demagogue it too vigorously and widely. Two, God’s Word remains as a foundation for the growth of a larger religion not divinely motivated, but which reveres the “Bible” idea. In this, its members unconsciously create a much broader, global protective context in which that Word is preserved and distributed. Every biblical symbol reflects this same strategy.

There is a temptation to ask if this truth is of ultimate value to everyone, why is it not given unambiguously? After all, if an entire people are dying of some new virus and you have a sure-fire cure, love means offering it freely. Why does the revelation have to be symbolic at all? This is a persistent and loud complaint of liberal, universalist sects and atheists.

I remind you that the spiritual body is not the physical body, and a physical drug is not a spiritual one. The spiritual body, as the physical body, is a body effected by the accumulated attitudes and actions as a result of free will with respect to that life. But the spiritual body is by definition free will, history, reason, love, attitude, and belief itself, not sloughed off in death but remaining to stand as an indelible witness of that person as the being in himself, not the beings corporeal representation device. The cure for spiritual sickness is spiritual and will metabolize successfully only by working in nuclear agreement with the spiritual body of its introduction. Since the spirit is itself a decision and its effects, not only a possible reflection of it, a cure passed out indiscriminately is one that assumes that the spirit will benefit from it like the physical cure, without the synergistic cooperation of the receiver. In all due respect to Calvinists, this is then a denial that we even have spirits (or souls if you will), defined as the strongest and most identifying part of an individual which has to power and responsibility to accept or deny reality. To such an entity, you compassionately make the drug freely accessible. But since it is a transcendent truth, information, and not a thing, it can’t work in a spiritual body which treats it as a medical talisman, but only by being in the sense of a receptor to what it already is. If not, your just an antibody to the divine antibody.

By this same logic, God coming down and appearing on the White House Lawn before CNN cameras is not compassion, it’s the forcing of truth upon the receiver and the removal of his free will in accepting it. It’s not respect, its infantilizing, or thinking of people as programmable androids. In that case, no one can reject God. It leaves no room for your moral conscience to move in the process of search, discovery, and commitment. As such, it gives the holiest aspect of God, his sovereign non-contingency, and inter-dimensionality, which makes him inaccessible except through a mediator, an inconsequential aspect, and, therefore, just a notion.

We are discussing a moral decision and a moral choice made for your spirit when that is a most important act you can perform, emblematic of the soul, is not your moral decision, nor a moral decision of the one who makes it for you.

But if this depiction of Christ on the Cross represents God’s plan of redemption, and the plan demarcates fundamental evil from good, the depiction’s meaning has to be as earth-shattering by its true reveal as it is protective of it. The two essential elements of the Cross of Christ begin with this: rather than an answer, I ask if the Cross is first showing as a question and a moral choice between two things?

This is where it really gets interesting. But if your fear snakes override your need for the truth, don’t even try to follow me from here.

The Man: Sin and Righteousness

There is a cross. There is a man on the cross.

The man, again, tortured and murdered by hanging on this cross. His life, draining away. Bound, affixed, tied to this wood. Abused, crushed, and dying. Finally, he dies by hanging on this device of murder.

Our time now will center on this man. Who must he be a sacrifice for the sin of the world?

The act is not transcendently redemptive if it is not, first and foremost, a revelation. I think we have sufficiently exhausted this. We must then conclude the consequences of you taking this as something primarily designed to be mysterious with benefits that reach out to the individual only from Heaven is a full-frontal coup to its designed power and the crushing of the message.

As I have just discussed, sin is the forcing of a spiritual cure into the function of a physical, “evil” one, that one receives and holds without the necessity of moral reflection, with it giving healing benefits automatically. This is called talismanism, what the ancients called idolatry. Many of us readily insist that before the act of the Cross and the Man can in any way be redemptive, it must be known and believed. But taking the meaning of the Man and the meaning of the Cross as God/Jesus/Savior/Redeemer on burden/death/sacrifice/love are weasel words. They are designed to accommodate the necessity of divine meaning with the ardent love of a religious device transmitting virtue to a person without necessarily any depth of understanding, love, and meditated engagement. These words are conceptual, not revelatory. What would be revelatory is when the meaning reduces to a symbol concept so powerful that it then forces a signification which then stands for the end of the signification process, not the beginning or middle. It is ending in the thing-in-itself, not its mediator. It is ending in a piece of knowledge that could not have come from the human mind. Those words are infinitely re-assignable to another vulnerable concept, such as “political activist,” “radical rabbi,” “hippy saint,” “persecution,” “lover of people,” “ultimate ritual sacrifice,” etc. None of these stops a possible chain of signification because “truth” has arrived by the symbol’s instrumentality. We want an idea that is revelatory outside of the mind’s resources in an engagement with common words.

For this mediation to succeed in producing a revelation, there are some theological keywords for scoping out that apply to this man: righteousness and morality, lust, and sin. He has to be righteous and not carnal, but by the meaning of carnality and sin, because righteousness is defined by what it is not. We are not going to offer “righteousness,” for example, and leave its definition open or rendered to “lawful obedience” or some similar. The working definition has to be consistent with the spiritual receiver in the act of free will in wanting and choosing to see some revelation which, like the motive, is alien to carnal thought and expectation.

After this, we consider the display of righteousness and sin in the scene of a man hanging on a Cross, which is the display of sacrifice for world sin.

Please go to the next page…

Now, according to the Bible, some are spiritual and those carnal. Those righteous and unrighteous. God hearers, and God resisters. The Man is one of these, perhaps the righteous, perhaps a deceiver. For him to deliver a revelation for all, it is in the sense of being offered to all but not accepted by all. But to be unrighteously accepted or denied, it will have to be one that is as accessible as it is obscure to all, depending upon the kind of person who is in view. The Man on the Cross is a carnal resister to some and a canal encourager to others. One revelation is for the righteous, and one hidden for the unrighteous.

If he is a sacrifice for the sin of the world in the sense of its possible cure, it is evident that the agent of this task can’t be unrighteous carnal and sinful. He has to be righteous in a way that is not human but possible for humans, long before you consider whether such a sacrifice is possible. But what do these concepts mean?

Well, there is an ultimate sense of these ideas and a common one, just as there is an open and easily appropriated signification to this sacrifice and a closed but accessible one.

The common-sense version is that righteousness is doing things according to a moral code. Unrighteous is doing otherwise. Carnality is acting and thinking in accord with the world and its devices and rewards, and spirituality is doing things in agreement with God’s world.

If this is so, the moral code is according to that of this other world. Not in law or obedience touted as given from another world, or a code which itself does not have such a transcendent mark. This Man’s moral code, which should be ours, is one impossible for us to obey because the standard is too high for us, or else we could do it ourselves. But this can’t be primarily physical obedience because that is not an obedience of a certain reflection of the spiritual body in itself, not necessarily carried out by the moral spirit itself, but can just as well thought by anti-spiritual motives. The moral code and its obedience have to be of exclusive alien origin and motivation, or else it can’t stand as a witness to a genuinely spiritual state. This origin is not a matter only of faith and personal will. The origin displays openly or will not be an available universal choice, but only for those that are looking for righteousness as a personal attribute of spiritual superiority and functioning selfishly as Hell insurance. A transcendent “righteousness” for the Man on the Cross is not ultimately obeying then a “moral code,” implying any kind, possibly within our common understanding and ability. It implies a specific spiritual, moral code that speaks to the morally intended spirit God’s nature and existence, so the receiver of this Man’s morality obeys it in its right place and way. Not a literal obedience, as in the Man’s sacrifice, but from the standpoint of a witness to it, and a returned faith in its truth.

Some of these ideas are easy. Righteousness means being spiritual, and that means following the moral code laid down by the God of the Spirit, of that other dimension above the temporal. But it’s only easy if they are referring to a conceptual object of the other world, and we have far from finished defining these keywords up to a particular species of transcendence.

Words Mean Things

Lets just back up and think about the difference between mere ideas and predicates as applied to the sinful way that we use spiritual language in a carnal fashion.

I am saying that any working idea of “righteousness” and “sin,” for example, is not represented by a concept which points to predicating knowledge, which is so open that it allows another symbol for it, which is opaque by definition. Both the concept and the predicate must be transcendent, with the concept having the ability to only refer to the divine knowledge, for which it cannot point higher.

A conceptual object means “idea.” An idea is a symbol for a range and quality of knowledge, data, information which necessitates representation and mediation to and between its giver and its receiver. Since this is about God’s ultimate ideas, then it’s between God’s mind and ours. There is something that these words mean that originates in God’s mind and will. Saying that, for example, “righteousness” will predicate and signify by knowledge, by information, by truth defined as “obedience to God,” can’t be the end of this signification search back to that ultimate, it’s just a nudge in that general direction. This means that that the definition is still carnal, still in the world, still lacking connection to God. If we are talking about discreet categories of knowledge, then the meaning of our words that refer to something other than our natural, carnal sense of “knowledge” has to be discreet, or else you are taking ideas which lead only toward and not into it. If so, it must be an example of a world completely outside of mind, the emotions, and the systems which this world invents and uses.

Let me give you an example. You are an auto-mechanic and trained as such, but you want to become a neural surgeon because you’re good with your hands, and you want more money. You can’t become one just because you want it. Let’s say that Joe wants a Doctorate in neural medicine. Still, he figures that the best way of doing this is to read a medical textbook and memorize all the surgical vocabulary and their definitions. Although he is unaware of how to use any of these words in a general conversation on the chemistry, surgical techniques, and biology of the profession, he goes to the medical college and starts composing random sentences and conversing with the professors using all this terminology anyway, expecting that they will accept him as a surgeon and grant him a degree.

If he thinks this possible, he would be quite disrespectful of both the faculty, the profession, knowledge, and generally of reality itself. His aim is more money. He has in real interest in the business, or else he would commit himself to learn it properly and thoroughly. Does he deserve a doctorate in neural medicine based upon his handling of its sacred ideas?

If the attitude and the actions of the mechanic are an indication of his willful and selfish use of higher things in an attempt only to take them for himself, this is unrighteousness. Righteousness shows by pursuing and having higher things. Any talk or actions you engage in with those higher things, as irrational as it is, is but an attempt to steal them for yourself by your superficial attachments.

You might say that this is an incompetent and absurd analogy. First, the idea that you have to know all the technical jargon of theology to go to heaven? And how can I use such an insane and clueless person like this, whom you would never find in the real world? But that’s why I used it because the insanity in how we use transcendent keywords is even more insane and irrational than this auto-mechanic.

No, of course, you don’t have to know all the jargon. But I’m not talking about “biblical pericope” and “hypostatic union.” I’m talking about “righteousness,” “spirit,” and “sin,” fundamental things even a child could handle. The auto-mechanic is not really using medical terms to use in his fake-out that you would likely only get from a medical textbook. He actually thinks that if `he uses “body” and “blood” and “vein,” this is enough to qualify for a surgeon. If not a surgeon, but a theologian, this level of depth is also enough, with the open and unqualified use of such as “faith,” “sin” and “righteousness. So my example is really, really crazy and unlikely except within the spatio-temporal world that uses transcendent things only to pretend its pursuit, love, and learning. Our world of spiritual hypocrisy.

No, if you’re going to use a word, no matter how basic, that refers to the other world, you have to use still another word, or reformat that idea so that it includes and is qualified by something specific that could have only come from that world and is proof of it. You can’t use “duodenal mucosal resurfacing” in a sentence, or use “righteousness” in a sentence, and be said to understand this stuff. You need a medical or theological qualifier, or you need to keep talking.

Please go to the next page…

For a theologian, the distance between you and any of your transcendent authorities is naturally much greater than you and the medical certification board when not certified by them, no matter how unqualified you are for their degree. If you’re a theologian, the spatial distance between a simple idea representing a proposed transcendent quality or property and a demonstration that shows the validity of that idea is much greater than “Duodenal mucosal resurfacing” and the case studies in France that demonstrate its effectiveness and safety for the procedures release for the general population. In the context of faith, it is way easier to use “God” without “of prophecy” or ”word,” His transcendent demonstrations, than using “DMR” without referral to its proof-of-concept, “Revita DMR trials.” Without referral to its physical demonstration in a certain paper to the FDA for the purpose of instilling confidence in for that procedures certification and implementation. The theological one is easier because transcendence is naturally far from the heart, instantly thought of cursively and with its unreality leading its apprehension. Its unreality or irrelevance is influencing you more than its proof-of-concept if you use a technical term as a general one.

Please go to the next page…

Since this is the case, you have to be ten times more careful in how you talk about it if you want to be qualified as a theologian and not a scientist at best, and a huckster or worse. Not to mention your qualification as having a real faith issued/caused/made available by a transcendent authority.

Theology is not the study of God’s theology because “theo” means “God,” but because a study of God is only legitimate if God’s revealed qualities and acts from that dimension in that which is not God is the focus of the study. “God” does not stand alone as a concept, but it implies another dimension that pertains to his fact to be an industry above mere fantasy. “God,” the idea, is an unspoken but highly qualified one. Theology is then the use of words that refer to transcendence in a way that demonstrates God to yourself and others that He is known and understood by the greatest examples of his transcendence. You can’t use “righteousness” and say it means something like “obedience to God’s moral law” and call this proper theology, because “obedience,” “God,” “moral” and “law” can exist either explicitly or implicitly with no connection to a particular and ultimate example of them which is not from here. They are ideas, they are not divine predicates in a real and objective demonstration of God, and if you don’t have that you don’t have any God to faith, except faith in a nice idea.

Am I beating a dead horse now? Ok, let’s take this forward.

“God” and his Reveal

You might not have thought about it, but the Bible follows all this almost exclusively. The Bible is written not like a clueless, emotional, and groundless tout, no matter how much atheists and far-leftists want to think of it as such. The Hebrew Bible and its combined New Testament are entirely alone among this type of literature in its stubborn insistence that it’s a proven revelation, not just the wishful thinking of its subjectively inspired human authors.

Isaiah 48:3. “I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, and I shewed them; I did them suddenly, and they came to pass. 4 Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass; 5 I have even from the beginning declared it to thee; before it came to pass I shewed it thee: lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, hath commanded them.6 Thou hast heard, see all this; and will not ye declare it? I have shewed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst not know them. 7 They are created now, and not from the beginning; even before the day when thou heardest them not; lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I knew them. 8 Yea, thou heardest not; yea, thou knewest not; yea, from that time that thine ear was not opened: for I knew that thou wouldest deal very treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb.”

You can confirm that fact even in its most casual use of its key nouns. Its use of, for example, “God,” is always with an explicit or at least strongly implied qualifier to his informational demonstration in the world, or his specific connection to his domain, which distinguishes him from the unrevealed and pagan gods around.

The reason why we are going down this road when I’m supposed to be talking about the Man on the Cross and that display of sin and righteousness is that I’m going to suggest that the miraculous qualifiers that are associated with “God” are much stronger for the association of both the Man on the Cross and the Cross itself. This will show how the meaning was tossed out after the1st century, and why the church is being destroyed by those who are continually let in that have no interest in this whatsoever.

“God of Heaven” (Ge 24:3,7; 2Ch 36:23; Ezr 1:2; Ezr 5:11-12; Ezr 6:9-10; Ezr 7:12,21,23; Ne 1:4-5; Ne 2:4,20; Ps 136:26; Da 2:18-19,37,44; Jon 1:9; Re 11:13; Re 16:11)

“God of Abraham” (Ge 26:24; Ge 28:13; Ge 31:42,53; Ex 3:6,15-16; Ex 4:5; 1Ki 18:36; 1Ch 29:18; 2Ch 30:6; Ps 47:9; Mt 22:32; Mr 12:26; Lu 20:37; Ac 3:13; Ac 7:32)

“God of the Hebrews” (Ex 3:18; Ex 5:3; Ex 7:16; Ex 9:1,13; Ex 10:3)

“God of Israel” (201 instances)

“God of hosts” (39 instances)

“God of truth” (De 32:4; Ps 31:5; Isa 65:16)

God of knowledge (1Sa 2:3)

God of glory (Ps 29:3; Ac 7:2)

God of the spirits of all flesh (Nu 16:22; Nu 27:16)

This is a very truncated list. It does not even come close to representing the point. Search for “Lord of,” with such as results as “Lord of Hosts” (244 instances).

References to Abraham or Israel are references not just to people or collectives, but more importantly, to precisely what God told them and what God subsequently did with them. They are this equivalent. God revealed himself to them, either by the personal presence or by disclosure of that about him and his mind, which only he could know and which proves it.

I point out that your revelation of yourself to another person must go far beyond your bodily presence and incidental actions as this disclosure of who you are. The body is a superficial thing relative to your spirit, and you can have a limitless number of false readings by it. What really does it is when you speak. You relate your beliefs, feelings, history, intentions. A police report also shows a lot and the testimony of others. Therefore, it’s mostly by information carried on spoken words or in documents, not only by sight.

For Abraham and the rest, when a Jew said “Abraham,” they were not thinking just about a guy that is the physical progenitor of the Jewish race. They thought about his connection to God in a relationship in which the two spoke to each other, with Abraham receiving a revelation about God concerning the future of humankind. Abraham talked to God, who promised him physical and spiritual progeny more numerous than the stars of heaven. To Israel, that God brought them by Moses out of Egypt by signs and wonders, sustaining them by the same agency in the desert. They were not fed by “water” or by “manna” or by “quail,” but by supernaturally produced instances of them. God finally brought them into the “promised land,” the land of prophetic promise, and through the miracle of the parting of the Jordan River.

Remember this, because it is absolutely essential to understand the plan of redemption in which we are now supposed to be partakers. Don’t forget the image of Christ on the Cross when I start to talk about how these things are written this way for a purpose, having the ability to be turned a carnal way or a particular spiritual way, which is the presentation to you of a test by a kind of question.

When the New Testament as a whole comes into view, this question is what its all about, with an answer mostly to what God is and where God is by a fulfilled demonstration of himself.

God of great price, God of peace, God of all grace, God of the holy prophets, God of our Lord Jesus Christ, God of all comfort, God of patience and consolation, God of the living (not of the dead), God of my salvation, Kingdom of God/Heaven. God (Father) of lights.

The Old Testament references often refer to a prophet, an agent of God to whom he spoke and gave a revelation of the future. This includes Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, Moses, and the rest. Then the most frequent mention of them is to their collective children, Israel, the Hebrews, who are the people of prophetic promise.

When we get to the New Testament where is related to a momentous fulfillment and representation of God’s existence, nature, and plan, you can see that a lot of these informational qualifiers are referring specifically to a past promise and its revelation. A realization of a supernatural oath, which forms a context for such ideas as grace, patience, salvation, peace, sin, and righteousness. These are not defined arbitrarily. Each one refers to a particular line of biblical evidence of God’s work, what he has realized and revealed, not only “God.” With each instance, the expositor can open scripture and show you what God has done to give peace, save, build a kingdom, give patience and consolation, which are supernatural events of history toward the outworking of his plan of redemption.

But the greatest is this:

God’s Son

What must be remembered here is that all of these informational qualifiers of the God concept are the product of the Messiah and for the Messiah. Not one of them is attributed directly to a “God” who is only a concept but only to a God who is revealed in the flesh. Messiah is the revelation of God in the flesh. Literally, God’s promise, his prophetic utterances to the Prophets, come true. This looks a lot like this necessary dichotomy of idea and demonstration of which have spoken. It also looks a lot like a man and a Cross.

“Man” is an idea. Even “Messiah,” “Christ,” and “Jesus” is an idea. What God did is not an idea. It’s not the token or representation of reality; it is reality, what the Bible calls “Truth.” You cant use the concept without the reality, or else you have an uncontrolled idea given to carnal culture to redefine according to its wishes. “God’s Son” is a concept, but the concept is qualified with a demonstrative predicate, and like ‘Abraham,” it is put to faith as the equivalent of God himself and identically for God’s Son himself.

1.Moscow in. Vladimir Bukovsky 1942-2019. Vladimir Bukovsky 1942-2019. https://www.vladimirbukovsky.com/judgment-in-moscow. Published 2019. Accessed November 18, 2019. ↩

0 notes

nebris · 5 years ago

Text

Her Grandfather Founded the Westboro Baptist Church. Twitter Helped Her Leave It.

To understand her own extreme beliefs, Megan Phelps-Roper began listening to people who reached out to her on social media

Megan Phelps-Roper’s conversion began on Twitter. Phelps-Roper is the granddaughter of Fred Phelps, the founder of Westboro Baptist Church, based in Topeka, Kansas. Westboro is infamous for its anti-queer protests at the sites of military funerals and other tragedies, deploying church members to hold up signs that say, “Thank God for dead soldiers,” “God blew up the troops,” “Thank God for 9/11,” and “God hates America.”

In 2008, when she was 22, Phelps-Roper started a Twitter account for the church, where she quickly gathered followers by replying to celebrities and politicians and asserting the church’s hateful message. But Twitter was also where Phelps-Roper’s understanding of faith, God, and identity began to change. In her memoir, Unfollow, Phelps-Roper tells the story of her life in the church and how the dialogue she encountered on Twitter caused her to leave her family and her entire way of life.

Like Phelps-Roper, I also grew up as a fundamentalist Christian and have struggled to come to terms with the faith that raised me and the faith I have now. I recently spoke with her about her conversion in reverse as well as Christianity in America today and the potential for grace and atonement.

Lyz Lenz: When people hear about organizations like the Westboro Baptist Church, the reaction is often: just leave. But it’s more complicated than that. For you, your church was your family; it was your whole world. What did it mean to leave?

Megan Phelps-Roper: If organizations like Westboro were universally bad, they wouldn’t exist. There had to be some draw, and at Westboro, there was a lot of draw. The church was almost entirely made up of my extended family, and everyone in the church felt like family. We did everything together: We had dinner together, played video games; we read books and watched movies together. You were raised to be willing to do anything for one another. As long as you were a member of good standing, there was this incredible sense of love and belonging. In many ways, it was really beautiful.

These were the people who brought you food when you were sick. They threw baby showers and weddings. Westboro was your whole life. After you left, who were you?

I was indoctrinated. I shied away from using that term for a while, but the fact is, it’s true. I was taught that our beliefs were the infallible words of God. The paradigm was just so strictly ingrained into my brain. The idea of deviating from it was absolutely terrifying. What leaving means is you are going to be cut off from this community that is your everything.

Also, you’re going to hell.

At Westboro, the depictions of hell are extremely vivid. The only thing that changes in hell, according to the church, is your capacity to feel pain. As the capacity to feel pain increases, so does the pain. It’s absolutely terrifying. I believed God was going to curse me for having left this group of people. I was terrified I was going to get in a car accident, or I’d get some terrible disease. I believed there was no chance I was going to make it to old age.

I think for people not raised in a fundamentalist church, it’s hard to understand how the concept of hell is used as a tool of control.

My husband had a very difficult time understanding that we really believed in hell. He really thought we were all just pretending because this was what was required of us. But it was a very real fear for me.

What do you think people in America need to understand about religious fundamentalism?

That people can choose to believe differently. I was 26 years old when I left. Technically, I had the legal choice to leave when I was 18. But because of the way I was raised, leaving made just as much sense as cutting off a limb and then jumping into shark-infested waters. That’s how we saw the world, as this evil, corrupt place. And Westboro was the only refuge from that world.

Do you think that Westboro is an aberration in the world of Christianity? Or do think it’s an extension of what white Christian America says about faith?

There are aspects of Westboro that are, of course, more extreme in the way that certain religious practices manifest. But the idea that the Bible is the infallible word of God, that it’s unquestionable — this is common. Some people cannot believe there is an alternative interpretation of the Bible aside from their own. I was really shocked after I left and started talking to Evangelical Christians who were different from those I met in Westboro.

I remember going to a Lutheran church where there was a sermon about the apocalypse. The pastor told us the apocalypse is a metaphor, that it’s something we inflict upon ourselves and each other, and that the second coming of Jesus happens inside our hearts. I was like, “You can say that?”

Absolutely! That’s what I write about, the idea of epistemological humility. You can have strong beliefs, but people need to understand our perspectives are limited and that there is still more to learn. This kind of thinking is not at all limited to Westboro. I wrote about going into a casino after leaving the church and talking to a bartender, and she described the Westboro-like beliefs that her mother had taught her. Westboro is really well known because of its unique, extreme beliefs. But all across the country and around the world, it’s really unreal how common these things are.

So how do you get someone like you to leave?

I gave a TED Talk a couple of years ago detailing the strategies that helped change my mind. If you want to reach people on the other side, don’t assume bad intent on their part — they came to these beliefs based on a lifetime of experiences. Instead, ask questions.

One of the positive things about looking at extreme beliefs is that it highlights the fundamental problem with thinking that way. Taking these beliefs to their somewhat logical extension, people can see the parallels; they can see the similarities and realize, “Wow, that is not what I believe.” That’s the experience I’ve had too.

You encourage people to have a dialogue. But dialogue can be dangerous if you are queer or a person of color.

I’m always very careful to say that it is incumbent upon every individual in every situation where you have an opportunity to reach out to do it. I still reach out to my family in Westboro. I do it in interviews and on Twitter. But I also do it privately in messages that don’t get a response. I miss them desperately, but sometimes it’s just too painful and unsafe to reach out.

What I’m advocating for is that more people reach out across these divides. But for whatever reason, if you don’t have the emotional resources or you can’t or don’t want to develop the skills to do it, I completely understand that.

What I found so compelling about your story is that you were actively making Twitter a toxic place — but it also became a positive place for you.

I often say things like, “Twitter is a cesspool because we’re making it a cesspool.” And social media companies can do something to improve it. But I also think we’re looking for a technical solution to a cultural problem.

We need to be deliberate. We can decide to follow people we disagree with, consider their ideas and why they think the way they do, and be willing to engage with them.

That was the difference between the people who changed my mind on Twitter — the people who were willing to listen, have a conversation with me versus the people who just wanted to shame me. And again, I completely understand why people wanted to shame me. I was doing really shameful things, but I couldn’t see that they were shameful because of the environment that I was in.

I heard someone define shame as the feeling that we get when we violate the norms of our community. For me, that was a huge aha moment. I had grown up learning to celebrate death and tragedy because that’s how Westboro responded to bad things that happened. When I look back, how absolutely disgusting and backward is that? When I went on Twitter and all these people were trying to shame me, I knew I wasn’t part of their community. I felt like they were evil.

This dynamic is now playing out across our polarized country. We’re not recognizing that if you try to shame people, they’re not going to be moved by your shame to feel shame. They’re going to be motivated by your shaming to keep doing what they’re doing. It really just pushes them deeper into these beliefs and into their own communities. It’s one of the hardest things in the world to be willing to empathize with a person in a moment when they seem not to deserve it the most.

I want to understand how you see forgiveness. You did do things that were really harmful to other people, and now you’re back in the public sphere, saying things and asking people to listen to you again. How can people trust you?

For a long time after I left the church, everything I did was something somebody asked me to do. I didn’t talk about my experience unless somebody said they wanted to hear it. After having spent my entire life telling other people how to live, I was wary of stepping back and telling people, “Okay, I figured it out.”

I wrote about this in the book, but I went to a Jewish festival where I learned the concept of Tikkun Olam — repairing the world. I understood that I and my family have added to the brokenness in the world, and it’s up to me to try to find a way to repair some of it.

How do you define your faith today? Do you go to a church?

I am not religious anymore. I don’t want to say I’m not a believer because I’m still such a passionate believer in so many things. It’s just not in the divine or supernatural; it’s in humanity, hope, and grace. That concept of grace, that’s the epigraph of the book, is this line from The Great Gatsby. It says, “Reserving judgment is a matter of infinite hope.” And to me, that is the concept of grace. It’s the idea of seeing other people and being on a journey and that there is hope for them tomorrow or to change over time. We know that we grow and change all the time.

Grace is a very religious concept. How does your concept of grace now differ from the one you were taught in the church?

My mom had a two-word definition of grace: unmerited favor. I was taught that is the grace of God. You deserve nothing. You deserve nothing good. You deserve death and hell. And it’s only by the grace of God that any good, any human being, has any hope. But now I see grace as a posture of generosity for ourselves and other people to understand when people do things that are wrong.

I feel like the recipient of so much grace. What we did to people in their most grievous, vulnerable moments, being outside of those funerals, praising and thanking God that this person was dead and that it was the judgment of God — I had done this to so many people, and for them to be willing to see me with grace was absolutely unreal to me. That was the thing that really gave me hope after I left.

What does that atonement look like?

I don’t like to talk about the financial aspect, but giving is one way. It’s reaching out to my family and trying to help them find better ways. Not just because I want my family back but because they still affect so many other people.

It is helping other people escape similar destructive ideologies. Every opportunity that I have been offered, I have tried to take advantage of. I want to use these experiences to be a force for healing rather than what I did for so many years, which was contributing to people’s pain.

Written by Lyz Lenz Author of God Land. Columnist for the Cedar Rapids Gazette. The book Belabored is forthcoming from Bold Type Books in August of 2020.

https://gen.medium.com/her-grandfather-founded-the-westboro-baptist-church-twitter-helped-her-leave-it-2de5a4266dcc

0 notes

is-god-real-blog · 6 years ago

Text

How do you build real faith?By Douglas S. Winnail

Faith in God is listed as one of the fundamental teachings of Scripture (Hebrews 6:1–2). In fact, Christians are told that “without faith it is impossible to please Him” (Hebrews 11:6). However, Jesus Christ, looking ahead to the end of this present age—our time today—raised a sobering question to His disciples. He asked, “when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8).

Since the Bible records the question, it might be good for each of us to consider how it applies to our own personal situation. As we will see, the Scriptures indicate that real faith will be in short supply as we approach the end of this age. The parable of the ten virgins reveals that five were unprepared for Christ’s return because they lacked certain qualities (Matthew 25:1–13). They were not invited into the kingdom of God as a result, and they missed out on an incredible reward. In the light of these scriptures, perhaps we can see why Mr. Roderick Meredith has repeatedly emphasized the need to build an atmosphere of faith within the Church of God. To build real faith we need to understand some vital aspects of faith.

What is Real Faith?

Faith has been attacked and ridiculed for centuries. Mark Twain remarked “faith is believing in what ain’t so.” Atheist H. L. Mencken asserted, “faith is an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.” Karl Marx termed faith in religion “…the opium of the people.” One prominent American businessman has stated that religious faith “is for losers.” Many misconceptions also exist today about real faith. One dictionary definition states that faith is “a firm belief in something for which there is no proof”—which, as we will see is just the opposite of the truth.

The word faith comes from a Latin word fidere, which means to trust, believe, or have faith. Faith has been defined as an “unquestioning belief” in God, religion, an idea, a person or organization. Faith generally means having a strong conviction, deep trust, reliance upon, or loyalty to something. Your faith can also refer to a religion or system of beliefs. In the Old Testament the Hebrew word for faith is emuwn which means to trust, or have faith. In the New Testament the Greek word for faith is pistis, which means to trust, believe, have faith or rely upon. But do these words mean we must have faith in or rely upon something or someone for which there is no proof? Do we just decide to believe without asking any questions? Hardly!

The biblical definition of real faith is found in the book of Hebrews. The Scriptures plainly state that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not [yet] seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Substance means assurance, realization, something like a title or deed to a house or piece of property. Evidence entails proof. The author of Hebrews states “By faith we understand that the worlds were formed by the word [command] of God, so that the things that are seen [the creation] were not made of things that are visible” (Hebrews 11:3). Many scientists today are coming to realize the universe could not have evolved by accident. The prerequisites for life are so many and so tightly defined that the universe had to be planned to sustain life from the very beginning. The proof of God is definitely there for those with eyes to see! Real faith rests on solid proof—not just feelings, conjecture or wishful thinking. The modern notion that faith doesn’t rest on proof actually undermines the real faith that Scripture talks about.

Faith is also described in the Bible as a fruit or quality imparted by God’s Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:9; Galatians 5:22). The Holy Spirit is given to those who repent (Acts 2:38) and who make the effort to obey the laws of God (Acts 5:32). We will grow in faith as we exercise faith—as we trust God—and actually follow His instructions. As our faithfulness to God increases we will become more staunch, firm, determined, resolute in our belief in God. Martin Luther’s definition, “…faith is a living unshakable confidence,” is a paraphrase of the Apostle Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15:58.

The Foundation of Real Faith

Today we are tempted to put our faith in many things. However, not all are that dependable. Some are actually dangerous. Some people trust in God, others in money, friends, self, political leaders, or military power. Still others trust in science, other experts, astrology or fortune- tellers. The American philosopher, Eric Hoffer, has stated somewhat cynically, “Faith in a holy cause is a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.” He comments further that, “…where there is the technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for faith.” While there is a certain physical truth in what he says, he is actually mocking an example used by Jesus Christ (Matthew 17:20).

Our choice today of where to place our faith is almost endless. However, the Bible offers specific warnings about where not to place our faith. Nearly 3000 years ago Solomon wrote, “He who trusts in his own heart is a fool” (Proverbs 28:26). The Bible warns repeatedly about trusting in other gods beside the true God (Exodus 20:1–6). We are told when David numbered the fighting men of Israel—trusting in his own military strength—he sinned and did a very foolish thing (2 Samuel 24:1–11). Jeremiah warned about trusting in the lying words of false teachers (Jeremiah 7:4). Jesus cautioned about trusting in money and wealth (Matthew 19:21–23).

In terms of positive instruction the Scriptures urge us to “trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5–7). This is why it is important to prove and know that God really does exist. We must also learn to trust in God’s Word—the Bible (Psalm 119:142,160; John 17:17). This involves studying, proving and learning to live by every word of God. We must not only develop faith in Jesus Christ—that He was the Son of God who came to die for our sins—but also develop the faith of Jesus who trusted and obeyed His Father’s instruction to the point of saying “…not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). We must also develop real faith in Christ’s message about the coming kingdom of God(Mark 1:14–15). This means coming to understand what the kingdom of God is all about and our potential role in that kingdom. As that message becomes more real to us, our faith will grow.

A true Christian called by God will also want to find the true Church of God—the descendants of the church founded by Jesus Christ and the Apostles. Paul urged the Gentile churches in Thessalonica to follow the parent “churches of God” in Judea (1 Thessalonians 2:14). That Church exists today (Matthew 16:18). It continues to teach the same gospel and same way of life as the first century Church of God. You can identify God’s true Church by comparing the doctrines it teaches with the Scriptures. The truth of God does not change (Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8) over the centuries. With this positive identification you can put faith in the fact that you have found God’s true Church.

The Bible warns repeatedly about trusting or following false teachers who claim to be ministers of Jesus Christ (Matthew 7:15–20; 24:4,5,11; 2 Corinthians 11:1–14). Yet the Scriptures also urge Christians to follow and respect the ministry (1 Corinthians 11:1; 1 Thessalonians 5:12–13). You cannot put your faith and trust in the ministry unless you know they are teaching the truth. This will involve listening carefully on your part and comparing what you hear with what you clearly read in the Scriptures (Isaiah 8:20; 1 John 2:4). The apostle Paul commends the Bereans for doing this very thing (Acts 17:10–12). This is why Paul was inspired to write, “Test [prove, carefully examine] all things; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). When we do this we build a firm foundation for faith.

Why Do We Need Faith?

Although critics may scoff at the need for faith in God and His Word, the Bible reveals a dimension of knowledge that is clearly missing in our modern secular world.

From the Scriptures we learn that we have all sinned (Romans 3:23). As a result of knowingly or unknowingly breaking the laws of God (the biblical definition of sin—1 John 3:4) we are subject to a penalty of death for all eternity. However, by putting our faith in the fact that Jesus gave His life as a sacrifice for our sins we can be forgiven of our sins. This is what it means to be justified by faith (Romans 3:28; Galatians 2:16). In order to put your faith in Jesus Christ you need to prove that He really did exist, that He was who the Scriptures say He was, that He really did die and that He was resurrected. Knowing that you know the real facts builds faith.

A Christian must also live by faith (Galatians 3:11). This means changing your life so that you begin to live by every word of God (Deuteronomy 8:2–3; Matthew 4:4). You will start keeping the Sabbath and the Holy Days, to obey God (Leviticus 23) and to follow the example of Jesus and the early church (Luke 4:16; Acts 17:1–2; John 7:1–10; 1 Corinthians 5:7–8). As you step out on faith and begin to observe these commanded assemblies with other true Christians you will begin to understand God’s plan of salvation for mankind and the true purpose of life.

Your faith and practice of these biblical concepts will actually begin to set you apart from the rest of society—you will be different. This is what is meant when the Bible says you will be sanctified [set apart for holy use] by faith (Acts 20:32; 26:18).

The Bible reveals we are healed by faith (James 5:14–15), we will be saved by faith (Ephesians 2:8) and rewarded according to our faith (Hebrews 11:6). Healing involves trusting God for what only He can do. Salvation will include receiving eternal life and becoming part of God’s family when Christ returns to judge mankind (1 Corinthians 15; Romans 8:14–17). The reward for those who grow and overcome will be to rule as priests and kings with Jesus Christ in the coming kingdom of God (Daniel 7:27; Revelation 2:26; 3:11–12; 5:10; 11:15–18). When you have proven to yourself what the Scriptures actually promise, your faith will grow!

Lack of Faith Today

Believe it or not, the lack of faith in our modern world was prophesied nearly 2,000 years ago. The apostle Peter was inspired to predict, “…scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, ‘where is the promise of His coming?’” (2 Peter 3:3–4). Peter states that people will deliberately ignore such things as prophecy and the facts of recorded history (2 Peter 3:5–13). The apostle Paul predicted that people would be deceived and depart from the faith (1 Timothy 4:1), deny and discard the faith (1 Timothy 5:8), and that the faith of some would be overthrown by misleading ideas and arguments of false teachers (2 Timothy 2:18; 3:8). Paul indicates these activities, which flourished in the first century, would also prevail in the last days (2 Timothy 3:1–9). But how did Paul know this would happen? How could God inspire such accurate prophecies?

The Bible reveals that the tendency to doubt is a proclivity of human nature. Peter doubted even when Jesus invited him to walk on water (Matthew 14:31). Jesus chided His own disciples for their lack of faith that He had actually been resurrected (Luke 24:38). Thomas doubted until he actually saw certain evidence (John 20:24–29). We aren’t any different from the disciples. We, too, will doubt until we prove somthing otherwise. This is why proving what you believe is so important. With proof there is no room for doubt!

We are also told in Scripture that Satan will plant doubts to undermine real faith in God. He did this with Adam and Eve by suggesting that God wasn’t telling them the whole truth (Genesis 3:1–4). Satan tried to undermine Jesus Christ’s faith in God by misquoting the Scriptures (Matthew 4:1–11). Peter warned that practice would continue and would undermine the faith and confidence of some (2 Peter 3:14–18). That practice still continues today—so we must be careful! Paul also relates that the carnal human mind, influenced by Satan, actually resents trusting in God and resists following the instructions that God has revealed in His word (Romans 8:5–9). This is a battle we all have to fight—just like Paul had to fight it (Romans 7:14–25). As we trust and obey God, resisting and overcoming this negative tendency, we will grow in faith.

One of the biggest reasons for the lack of faith today is that doubt and skepticism about religious faith permeates our culture. God is allowing us to reap what has been sown down through the centuries of Western civilization (Jeremiah 2:8,19; Hosea 4:9). Doubts about God are a prime example. Euripides, a Greek poet of the 5th century BC wrote, “Do we, holding the gods exist, deceive ourselves with unsubstantial dreams and lies, while random careless chance and change alone control the world?” Thomas Jefferson advised people to “question with boldness even the existence of God.” Jefferson felt God would prefer reason to blind faith based only on fear, which he appears to assume the Bible advocates (but, as we have seen, it does not). Our sad state of affairs is summarized by the statement, “O Lord, if there is a Lord, save my soul, if I have a soul.”

Although 95 percent of Americans believe in God, many wonder if the miracles in the Bible actually occurred. Some have been told the Second Coming of Christ may be only a figurative or symbolic event—that it will not really happen. Many theologians today openly teach that it is no longer necessary to keep the Sabbath or the Holy Days—in spite of the commandments, the example of Christ and the apostles and the clear facts of early church history. These are among the many reasons why real faith is in short supply today—as Jesus Christ indicated it would be!

Building Real Faith

The challenge facing each of us as Christians is, how do we build real faith? What is involved? This is nothing new and is not limited to our present age. Even in the first century as Christ was beginning His church, “…the apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith’” (Luke 17:5). They knew they needed more faith and they asked for guidance. Peter later writes that we must give diligent effort to increase and add to our faith (2 Peter 11:5–11). But what must we do? Consider the following 7 steps.

(1) Ask God for more faith. Jesus instructed His disciples to ask, seek and to knock (Matthew 7:7–12). James offers the same advice (James 1:5). This is why the disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith. We can do the same. Pray earnestly about this.

(2) Prove what you believe. Follow Paul’s admonition (1 Thessalonians 5:21) and prove that God exists, that the Bible is His inspired word, where the true Church is and who are God’s true ministers. Prove what the Bible actually says, and hold fast to what you prove to be the truth.

(3) Study what the Bible reveals about faith. Read and meditate on the examples of faith described in Hebrews 11. Read the original accounts in the Old Testament.Determine what lessons you can draw from these accounts. Learn and grow.

(4) Stir up God’s Spirit. Faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit. God gives His Spirit to those who repent and obey Him. Pray, study, meditate and fast regularly. Nourish and use God’s Spirit. Doubts will disappear as our faith grows (2 Timothy 1:6–7).

(5) Live by faith. Put into practice what you read in the Scriptures. Trust God and His Word. If the Bible says to do it, then do it—don’t argue with the Scriptures. The American writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson stated, “We live by faith or we do not live at all. Either we venture or we vegetate. If we venture, we do so by faith simply because we cannot know the end of anything at its beginning. We risk marriage or we stay single. We prepare for a profession by faith or we give up before we start. By faith we move mountains of opposition or we are stopped by mole hills.”

(6) Endure trials that will arise as you strive to live by every word of God. Enduring and overcoming the trials will help us build both faith and patience (James 1:2–4). It has been said, “If we desire to increase faith we must consent to its testing.” Remember that God has promised to get us through the trials (1 Corinthians 10:13) and the trials He allows are for our ultimate good (Romans 8:28).

(7) Don’t compromise or deny the true faith. The Bible warns repeatedly about false teachers who will undermine and overthrow the faith of others by promoting misleading doctrines and ideas. We are also told many will depart from or discard the true faith. However, the Scriptures clearly state there is one faith and one body [church], and it is the job of the ministry to promote the unity of the faith (Ephesians 4:4–6, 12–13). The role of the church is to maintain true doctrines (1 Timothy 3:15–16, see also Acts 15). This is why it is so important to know where God’s true Church is today and what the Bible actually says. The Scriptures are not to be interpreted as each individual sees fit in his or her own mind (2 Peter 1:20). This only leads to confusion, which damages and destroys faith. As we approach the end of this age and Satan increases his attacks on true believers, we will have to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once and for all delivered to the saints” (Jude :3).

Faith is important to God. Faithfulness is as important in our physical life as it is for our eternal life. As the apostle Paul saw the end of his life approaching he concluded, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7–8). He knew—he had faith and total confidence—his reward awaited him. The God of this universe has big things in store for all mankind—especially for those He is calling to be His firstfruits—those who learn now to trust Him. Let’s make a diligent effort to grow in faith. Let’s hold on faithfully to the Truth God has revealed to His Church. Let’s strive to build an atmosphere of faith in the Living Church of God—so when Jesus Christ returns He will find real faith in those He has called.

Article here

Picture cred here

#Faith

0 notes

catholiccom-blog · 8 years ago

Photo

Dogma Means Unity, not Division

Theology and apologetics are fascinating subjects of study. Theology is known as a “queen of sciences,” and, some add, “all the other sciences are her handmaidens.” St. Ignatius of Loyola, who studied for more than ten years in different classrooms, surveying disciplines from literature and art to grammar and mathematics, said that all other studies were wasteful compared to the study of theology.

Ignatius was also a strong proponent of apologetics, which is not dissimilar to theology and depends on the study of theology. Even in his Spiritual Exercises, the study of theology and apologetics is among the chief activities one can take up to benefit the spiritual life. He says:

Praise positive and scholastic theology. For as it is more characteristic of the positive doctors to encourage the affection to greater love and service of God our Lord in all things, so it also is more characteristic of the scholastic doctors to define and explain for our times the things necessary for eternal salvation, and to refute and expose all errors and fallacies

Theology is the highest science—especially to Christians—because it helps us understand information that we cannot discover by ourselves. Because God reveals himself to mankind, any study of the divine is an attempt to understand God.

There’s an interesting paradox in this. For theology to benefit us, we must realize that God has revealed something to us. Without that, there is no theology. But investigating that revelation is also theology.

The paradox of theology

Confused? Essentially, we do not know the benefit of theology without first doing theology. God has already planted this seed in us, but he continues to reveal himself to mankind through his Son, Jesus Christ. Our study of theology culminates in God, and what Christianity has discovered is that the God of the universe also wants to have a relationship with each one of us. So studying theology is not just a matter of being a hyper-intellectual but about living our daily lives with purpose.

There are several theological disciplines to study, and each comes with its own need for defense. There is moral theology, Trinitarian theology, patristic theology, and more, but the most important is that of dogmatic theology. Of course, dogmas are our principles of faith, the unchangeable doctrines that are pronounced by a pope speaking ex cathedra, or in an ecumenical council, which a Christian is bound by.

Ignatius and several more saints made dogmatic theology their fundamental pursuit. It might be our highest pursuit, but there’s another interesting paradox, a more practical paradox for why we study dogma: not only does it separate orthodoxy from dissent, and believer from heretic, it unifies Christians.

Dogma unifies

Dogma is so interesting when we think of its uses, because many people would be led to think that when the Church promulgates a de fide teaching (one that binds us), it is creating further division, putting unity at stake for the sake of “being right.”

But the exact opposite is true: The Church’s teaching is exactly what unifies her. The misunderstanding comes from the belief that dogmas are pronounced for new dogma, which many would think is a departure from the truth that once unified us.

The truth is, no new dogma is ever promulgated. When doctrines receive definitions, they are the same—but often with more clarity—as the teaching revealed to the apostles and the primitive Church. The Holy Spirit literally protects the Church from such corruption, and Bible is clear about this:

But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you (John 14:26).

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you (John 15:15).

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come (John 16:13).

In most cases, these dogmas are better understood over time, and therefore their given definitions, whether from ex cathedra or in an ecumenical council, are more complex. Therefore, there becomes a deeper study of the theological ideas surrounding the dogma, and furthermore, there arise more complex apologetic defenses. The truth never changed, because truth never can, which is why St. Albert the Great remarked, “It would be more correct to style this the progress of the believer in the faith than the faith in the believer.”

What we end up with is a greater understanding of the doctrine. Rather than a line in the sand, we have a ring that weds us to the truth. This is what we believe; this is why. This should illuminate the beautiful significance of our Faith: what separates heretics into limitless divisions unites the Church as a bride.

See, heresy produces more deviation, but orthodoxy produces more unity. Within each dogma is the subtlety of this bond of unity. When we say the Creed each Sunday, “I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church,” we are saying “I believe in unity” in four separate dogmatic dimensions: one, Christ founded one Church; holy, this church is sanctified according to one standard; catholic, this church is the same across every nation; apostolic, this church teaches one faith, the same as revealed to the apostles, perpetual to each generation.

The goal of apologetics

Knowing this, our top prize in apologetics is also unity. We never submit ourselves to the rigors of studying dogmatic theology unless we want to understand, firstly, what unites us. Likewise, we should never defend the Church with the goal of repelling people, but inviting them to communion in our mystical body. We repel ideas, not people.

Pope St. John Paul II explained all of this profoundly when he said, “The unity of all divided humanity is the will of God.” He continued:

Jesus himself, at the hour of his Passion, prayed "that they may all be one" (John 17:21). This unity, which the Lord has bestowed on his Church and in which he wishes to embrace all people, is not something added on, but stands at the very heart of Christ's mission. Nor is it some secondary attribute of the community of his disciples. Rather, it belongs to the very essence of this community. God wills the Church, because he wills unity, and unity is an expression of the whole depth of his agape. In effect, this unity bestowed by the Holy Spirit does not merely consist in the gathering of people as a collection of individuals. It is a unity constituted by the bonds of the profession of faith, the sacraments and hierarchical communion (Ut Unim Sint, 9).

The paradoxes of our faith are wonderful, but the highest purpose of it all is bound up in simple unity.

#Catholic Answers #Shaun McAfee #Catholic Teaching #Catholic Dogma #Catholic Church #Christian Unity

9 notes · View notes

a-woman-apart · 8 years ago

Text

The Road Less Traveled

In our last conversation I told my parents something that I'm not sure that I even believed at the time. I told them "I didn't come to this decision lightly." The decision, that is, to begin questioning the very fundamental beliefs of Christianity and the accuracy of the Bible in general. This has been a year's long process- all of 2016 was about me growing into my own identity. 2017, it turns out, was just the time when my new faith would be tested. It's true that I've gone back and forth a lot over the years in this search for the real me. During my early teenage years I was still too mentally ill to conduct the search properly. Now, I'm developing a better understanding of things. 2014-2015 I was extremely involved in church. I prayed on almost a daily basis. Mom and I would chat back and forth about some of things that were said to me in the prophetic and prayer lines. If I could go back, I wouldn't change those years. I even aided a friend of mine from the recovery home in finding her faith again. Those, too, were years of growth. They shaped my identity and perceptions today. I don't believe I was inauthentic in any way. I truly believed in what I was doing- I was truly being blessed. That's why you won't hear me dismissing churches and religions today. Fellowship with people and working together for the common good is so important. I'm at a church that feeds the homeless, pays off peoples' debts, visits people in hospitals. I love my church. Somewhere along the way, though, the doubts started to creep in. It happened at a time in my life where things were actually going unusually well. I had just moved into my own apartment after three years at the recovery residence. I was doing well in my classes. It didn't really make sense for me to question God then, if my questions arose out of some kind of discontent or anger at the heavens. It was none of those things. I think, that, left alone, I just had more time to really examine what it was that I truly believed. I had already started reading books like "Why Christianity Must Change or Die" by Bishop John Shelby Spong, and "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" by Christopher Hitchens. If I was truly at peace with what I believed, I would never have found the need to pick up those books, but I did. Behind the purposefully jarring and "controversial" titles were actually some fair, balanced, and well-thought-out views on God and religion. Shortly after my journey began I knew that I would need to start a blog to further expand on and explore my ideas. I still haven't received the feedback that I've been hoping for, but I did connect with a few awesome people. More importantly, I had a place where my thoughts could be filed and organized in a way that was easy for me to go back and review things. I started writing last January, and here we are. I'm actually being "out" about my beliefs. I didn't think I would ever find the courage to stand up and defend what I was feeling, but I was faced with the opportunity and I stood strong. I didn't cave even in the face of one of my big fears- total rejection by my parents and being cut off from my younger siblings. Of course, I still weigh that decision- of whether I really should've been honest and truthful. Lying, however, would've met not only that I didn't really respect my parents, but also that I didn't really respect myself. I know that it isn't permanent. I know I'll be able to speak to my family again, but for now, this is an opportunity to focus on myself. This is the year that I'm set to graduate from community college. Honestly, the thought of going on without my mom's support is a very tough one to be at peace with. I have to remind myself, though, that my dad never wished for me to go to college in the first place, and there was a high chance that neither of my parents would be at my graduation. Now, that's pretty much guaranteed- unless I have a "sudden change of heart" which seems to me to be very unlikely. The thing is, I never did it for them- I more or less did it in spite of them. I have to remind myself that I'm doing what I love, and I've sacrificed a lot to do this thing. I plan to go full steam ahead with my plans. By God's grace I'll make it- if not, there is always an opportunity to begin again. I feel nervous, but I have to just push through these fears into being the best self that I can be. Lots of people have been telling me that 2017 is a year of new beginnings and breakthrough for me, and while I'm not superstitious, I do tend to believe that God can speak through people in this way. God is not against me- if He were, I would've been gone a long time ago, but I'm still here. I'm still breathing in and out, and I'm still moving forward into the "exile" without a real destination in sight. It's just one foot in front of the other.

#the road less traveled #the exile #deconversion #ex-christian #ex-religious #ex-evangelical #new roads #new directions #change #new adventures #adulting #personal growth #spiritual growth

2 notes · View notes

hollowandeceptivephilosophy · 5 years ago

Text

Omnisubjectivism and Predestination

Christian theologians generally believe that God is not altered in relation to the World. (That is to say, whenever there is an encounter between God and creation, the change is always on the side of creation). This of course includes the act of creation, since to say otherwise implies God was incomplete without creation. (and that has implications for the essential goodness of creation; if creation is necessary for God’s own completion, creation itself might be worthless, only serving to perfect God. However, if creation is unnecessary and created by a good God, then it must be good in itself; for it can serve no other end).

However, Christian theologians also generally believe that God, in some sense, could choose which world to create; he did not need to create this world, or even a world that particularly resembles this world. (at the very least, Christian theologians tend to believe God could have created a world that only contains spiritual entities or only contains physical objects, which would be quite different from our own. Moreover, as some more rigorous science-fiction or fantasy alludes to, it seems quite possible that the world could be very different even through modifying certain fundamental constants or through introducing new kinds of fundamental forces).

Christian theologians also generally believe that human beings have some level of free will. Free will here does not necessarily mean “absolutely undetermined wills” but rather that human choice is a real causal element in the universe. At the minimum, this commits the standard Christian theologian to something like an emergantist account of the will; the will at the very least as to be among the things you would include in a final account of the world, and the failure to include it would make your description of the world wrong.

However, this creates the following oddity: God chooses a particular world to create, and that results in various new facts being true, among them the existence of time itself. For God to choose rationally, he must know the implications of what he is choosing, otherwise he is simply creating “the big bang” and letting the dice fall where they may (and while such a concept is appropriate to a demiurge, such a being would not be the fundamental source of all being, unless all being is just quarks and everything else is epiphenomena. But the Christian cannot believe that). But knowledge of this type would appear to require perfect, atemporal and unchanged knowledge of future free actions, and all future free actions. (Since God is unchanging).

How can such a thing be true without falling into radical determinism? God’s foreknowledge is necessary for all goods to participate in him and to truly be good gifts (and also, since temporality at least in the mode that we know is essentially tied with matter and energy in complex ways, the only way to preserve an immaterial God is for God to be eternal; either God is free from time and space and matter, or he is confined to all three). But it seems like future free actions should be unpredictable to some degree if persons are truly free.

I think the best solution here is Zagebski’s idea of God having, along with the other omni-attributes, something she calls omni-subjectivism. On Zagebski’s account, insofar as my experiential knowledge of myself (what-it-is-like to be me) is a good and a kind of knowledge, then it must find its ultimate completion in God; since there is no knowledge that does not originate in him. (We tend to collapse this distinction, and think that only Being originates from God, with the Goodness, Truth, and Beauty of individual beings being epiphenomenal from the gift of Being. However, while there might be some conceptual structure between the transcendentals, in God they are identical, and there is no ontological priority between them [as God is simple], and in the truth of each being [its self-disclosure to investigating minds and intellects] and in their goodness [its appeal to those who desire it in various ways] come as directly from God as their being. Self-knowledge is a particular modality of that, but an important modality. In a certain sense, knowing beings are both determined by their actual existence and their beliefs, habits, experience, and concepts about their existence (among other things, of course). [to use a rather common trope on this site; the idea of “coming out to oneself” would be unintelligible without something like this as a background belief.]. However, this means knowing objective facts about a person is not necessarily enough to know “them”, knowledge of them requires knowing how those facts impact their own self-knowledge and knowledge of the world; how it shapes their mode of being-in-the-world (to mangle Heidegger).

So purely objective knowledge is not enough to be a complete knower; and insofar as God by stipulation is a complete knower, he must know what it is like to be me. [indeed, God must know what it is like to be me better than I do; insofar as my self-knowledge and awareness flickers in and out with tedium, drink, exhaustion and collective euphoria. God lacks my tunnel vision about myself, he knows what it is like for me to be myself in toto eternally].

However, presumably I act based on my own knowledge, insofar as my actions are free, then if God knows what it is like to me be, he also knows what *I* would choose given any particular level of self-knowledge. But this is simply because he knows the very fact that is my exercise of freedom as intimately as I do, not because he knows some other facts, independent of that exercise, which enable perfect prediction. So there is no contradiction in fact, God’s knowledge of my *future* actions is because in a certain sense, my subjective being pre-exists in God before it is produced as created being. (However, insofar as God is completely simple, there is no “part” of God which is identical to “God’s eternal knowing of what-it-is-like to be me”, so there is no individual being other than me of which it is right to say, “you are me”.)

Objection: Doesn’t this mean that God knows what it is like to commit various sins?

Response: No, God knows what it is like to desire various goods, and strive for them under different levels of virtue or knowledge. Many aspects of our self-experience are not actually self-knowledge, and thus God does not need to eternally participate in them. This includes actual participation in sin, as well as the contemplation of sin. However, the core of every sin is a good thing (albeit, in some cases under such a incredibly strained or distorted vision that it is not worthwhile for humans to attempt a reconstruction of that core, as it will only distort our own vision of the good by requiring us to ‘emulate’ a deeply disordered way of viewing the world. What is metaphysically true does not require us to ethically rework in particular cases, the demonstration of the ultimately parasitic nature of evil is not some kind of empirical or inductive demonstration from cases, but rather is an argument from first principles). More broadly, for us good and evil, self-knowledge and various kinds of impositions our surroundings tend to be intimately intertwined. We cannot, and thus are not, expected to divide things up so finely; God tells us to follow general injunctions which handle the vast majority of normal cases, and instructs us to love each other and Him in all cases; because this intertwining cannot be sorted out short of the eschaton. [and indeed, God’s modes of revelation in history can be understood as accommodation to that intertwining].

Incidentally, God-in-Christ did experience temptation, but in his human nature and not in his divine nature. So God knows (humanly) what it is like to be actually tempted, even though that is not something that the divine nature could undergo in itself.

#Theology #Personal

0 notes

marcusssanderson · 6 years ago

Text

Michelle Obama Quotes To Inspire More Love and Humanity

Looking for inspirational Michelle Obama Quotes? Here ya go!

Michelle Obama is an American lawyer, university administrator, and writer who’s also the wife of former U.S. President Barack Obama. She was the First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, becoming the first African-American to serve the role.

During her tenure as First Lady, Obama played a key role in advocating for poverty awareness, education, health, and women empowerment. As an educated, intelligent, and independent-minded woman, she served as a role model for women and is also considered a fashion icon.

Born in 1964 in Chicago, Illinois, Obama is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. Following her graduation from law school, she worked as an associate in the Chicago branch of the firm Sidley Austin, where she met Barack Obama. She married Barack in 1992 and the couple has two daughters.

Michelle played a major role in her husband’s presidential bid, scaling down her own professional work to attend to campaign obligations.

In 2018, Michelle published “Becoming”, her autobiographical memoir where she writes about how experiences from her childhood in Chicago helped guide her life path. The inspirational book quickly became one of the hottest titles of the decade.

A successful lawyer who juggled the roles of being a wife, mother and a professional, Obama has clearly tapped into her Everyday Power. In that respect, here are some powerful inspirational Michelle Obama quotes.

Watch first lady Michelle Obama’s final White House speech

youtube

Michelle Obama quotes from her speeches and interviews about life, success, love, and education

1.) “Being president doesn’t change who you are – it reveals who you are.” – Michelle Obama

2.) “How hard you work matters more than how much you make.” – Michelle Obama

3.) “Success doesn’t count unless you earn it fair and square.” – Michelle Obama

4.) “We need to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation. We have lost our way. And it begins with inspiration. It begins with leadership.” – Michelle Obama

5.) “You can’t make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.” – Michelle Obama

6.) “My most important title is still “mom-in-chief.” My daughters are still the heart of my heart and the center of my world.” – Michelle Obama

7.) “Together, we can help make sure that every family that walks into a restaurant can make an easy, healthy choice.” – Michelle Obama

8.) “I hate diversity workshops. “Real change comes from having enough comfort to be really honest and say something very uncomfortable.” – Michelle Obama

9.) “I think that people are tired. They’re tired of the same old kind of politics. People want a new tone to politics.” – Michelle Obama

10.) “I am so tired of fear. And I don’t want my girls to live in a country, in a world, based on fear.” – Michelle Obama

More Michelle Obama quotes about life, America and our future

11.) “You see, our glorious diversity—our diversity of faiths, and colors and creeds―that is not a threat to who we are, it makes us who we are.” – Michelle Obama

12.) “If you are a person of faith, know that religious diversity is a great American tradition, too. In fact, that’s why people first came to this country: to worship freely. And whether you are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh―these religions are teaching our young people about justice, and compassion, and honesty. So I want our young people to continue to learn and practice those values with pride.” – Michelle Obama

13.) “Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down, and trust your instincts. Good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don’t hurt. They’re not painful. That’s not just with somebody you want to marry, but it’s with the friends you choose. It’s with the people you surround yourself with.” – Michelle Obama

14.) “We should always have three friends in our lives. One who walks ahead who we look up to and follow; one who walks beside us, who is with us every step of our journey; and then, one who we reach back for and bring along after we’ve cleared the way.” – Michelle Obama

15.) “My father’s life is a testament to that basic American promise that no matter who you are or how you started out, if you work hard you can build a decent life for yourself and an even better life for your kids.” – Michelle Obama

16.) “To the young people here, and the young people out there: do not ever let anyone ever make you feel like you don’t matter, or like you don’t have a place in our American story—because you do. And you have a right to be exactly who you are. But I also want to be very clear: this right isn’t just handed to you. No, this right has to be earned every single day. You cannot take your freedoms for granted.” – Michelle Obama

17.) “When you are struggling, and you start thinking about giving up, I want you to remember something that my husband and I have talked about since we first started this journey nearly a decade ago—something that has carried us through every moment in this White House and every moment of our lives—and that is the power of hope. The belief that something better is always possible if you’re willing to work for it and fight for it.” – Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama quotes about the American dream

18.) “It is our fundamental belief in the power of hope that has allowed us to rise above the voices of doubt and division, of anger and fear that we have faced in our own lives and in the life of this country. Our hope that if we work hard enough and believe in ourselves, then we can be whatever we dream, regardless of the limitations that others may place on us.” – Michelle Obama

19.) “It’s the hopes of folks like my dad, who got up every day, do his job at the city water plant; the hope that one day his kids would go to college and have opportunities he never dreamed of. That’s the kind of hope that every single one of us—politicians, parents, preachers, all of us—need to be providing for our young people. Because that is what moves this country forward every single day: our hope for the future and the hard work that hope inspires. So that’s my final message to young people as First Lady. It is simple.” – Michelle Obama

20.) “I want our young people to know that they matter. That they belong. So don’t be afraid. Do you hear me? Young people, don’t be afraid. Be focused. Be determined. Be hopeful. Be empowered. Empower yourselves with a good education. Then get out there and use that education to build a country worthy of your boundless promise. Lead by example with hope, never fear, and know that I will be with you, rooting for you and working to support you for the rest of my life.” – Michelle Obama

21.) “For all the young people in this room and those who are watching, know that this country belongs to you—to all of you, from every background and walk of life. If you or your parents are immigrants, know that you are part of a proud American tradition—the infusion of new cultures, talents and ideas, generation after generation, that has made us the greatest country on earth.” – Michelle Obama

22.) “I love that for Barack, there is no such thing as “us” and “them” – he doesn’t care whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or none of the above…he knows that we all love our country…and he’s always ready to listen to good ideas…he’s always looking for the very best in everyone he meets.” – Michelle Obama

23.) “Make no mistake about it, whether it’s health care, the economy, education or foreign policy, the choice we make in this election will determine nothing less than who we are as a country — but more importantly, who we want to be. Will we be a country that tells folks who have done everything right but are still struggling to get by, “tough luck, you’re on your own”? Is that who we are?… Or will we honor that fundamental American belief that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper and if one of us is hurting then we’re all hurting? Who are we? That’s what this election is about.” – Michelle Obama

24.) “Barack and I were both raised by families who didn’t have much in the way of money or material possessions but who had given us something far more valuable – their unconditional love, their unflinching sacrifice, and the chance to go places they had never imagined for themselves.” – Michelle Obama

25.) “We’re here because we believe that everyone in this country should do their fair share, plain and simple. Which means that teachers and firefighters shouldn’t pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires. Not in America. We believe that if you work hard, you shouldn’t go bankrupt because someone gets sick. You shouldn’t lose your home because someone loses a job. Not in America. And after a lifetime of hard work, you should be able to retire with some dignity and some security. That’s what we believe.” – Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama quotes about success

26.) “We have this window of opportunity; we have a chance to make something real happen. Something possible happen, to live beyond our fear — think about that, and help us. Help lift us up, help us fight this fight to change — transform — this country in a fundamental way…. This chance won’t come around again.” – Michelle Obama

27.) “You may not always have a comfortable life and you will not always be able to solve all of the world’s problems at once but don’t ever underestimate the importance you can have because history has shown us that courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.” – Michelle Obama

28.) “One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.” – Michelle Obama

29.) “The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.” – Michelle Obama

30.) “If your family doesn’t have much money, I want you to remember that in this country, plenty of folks, including me and my husband. We started out with very little. But with a lot of hard work and a good education, anything is possible—even becoming President. That’s what the American Dream is all about.” – Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama quotes about education

31.) “Changing the big picture takes time.. and the best things to do is focus on the things that we can make in our lives if we’re doing all that. That becomes the collage of real change” – Michelle Obama

32.) “It’s easier to hold onto your own stereotypes and misconceptions, it makes you feel justified in your own ignorance. That’s America. So the challenge for us is, are we ready for change?” – Michelle Obama

33.) “Studying in countries like China isn’t only about your prospects in the global marketplace. It’s not just about whether you can compete with your peers in other countries to make America stronger. It’s also about whether you can come together and work together with them to make our world stronger. It’s about the friendships you make, the bonds of trust you establish and the image of America that you project to the rest of the world.” – Michelle Obama

34.) “The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.” – Michelle Obama

35.) “Women in particular need to keep an eye on their physical and mental health, because if we’re scurrying to and from appointments and errands, we don’t have a lot of time to take care of ourselves. We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list.” – Michelle Obama

36.) “Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values, like you work hard for what you want in life. That your word is your bond; that you do what you say you’re going to do. That you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them and even if you don’t agree with them.” – Michelle Obama

37.) “I come here tonight as a sister, blessed with a brother who is my mentor, my protector and my lifelong friend. And I come here as a wife who loves my husband and believes he will be an extraordinary president.” – Michelle Obama

38.) “Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.” – Michelle Obama

39.) “Being your First Lady has been the greatest honor of my life, and I hope I’ve made you proud.” – Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama quotes from her memoir, Becoming

40.) “My job, I realized, was to be myself, to speak as myself. And so I did.”– Michelle Obama

41.) “Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.”– Michelle Obama

42.) “If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.”– Michelle Obama

43.) “This may be the fundamental problem with caring a lot about what others think: It can put you on the established path.”– Michelle Obama

44.) “Am I good enough? Yes I am.”– Michelle Obama

45.) “We needed now to be resolute, to keep our feet pointed in the direction of progress.”– Michelle Obama

46.) “Everyone on Earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.”– Michelle Obama

47.) “Time, as far as my father was concerned, was a gift you gave to other people.”– Michelle Obama

48.) “The easiest way to disregard a woman’s voice is to package her as a scold.” ― Michelle Obama

49.) “Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result” ― Michelle Obama

50.) “No one, I realized, was going to look out for me unless I pushed for it.” ― Michelle Obama

Which inspirational Michelle Obama quote was your favorite? What other Michelle Obama quotes would you add to the list?

Michelle Obama is a strong and intelligent woman. During her husband’s presidential bid, Michelle diligently campaigned on his behalf, traveling across the country, giving talks and making public appearances.

Besides, Obama offered her support for Hillary Clinton during the later’s 2016 presidential campaign. She made several high-profile speeches in favo

0 notes