Cindy Wity

Roll Away the Stone from Your Mouth

“Take away the stone,” Jesus said.

“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”

Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”

…

Is ‘t night’s predominance or day’s shame

That darkness does the face of Earth entomb

When living light should kiss it?

Ross, Act 2, Scene 4, Shakespeare’s Macbeth

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In the previous post Cow Bells Are for Fellow Travellers, the link presented Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s essay Live Not By Lies prefaced as follows:

Solzhenitsyn penned this essay in 1974 and it circulated among Moscow’s intellectuals at the time. It is dated Feb. 12, the same day that secret police broke into his apartment and arrested him. The next day he was exiled to West Germany. The essay is a call to moral courage and serves as light to all who value truth.

Solzhenitsyn’s polemical speech to Harvard was also a call to moral courage.

But what happens when moral courage is eschewed and truth is not uttered?  “Darkness does the face of Earth entomb.”

There has been a long history of “night’s predominance.” And you may think that you are a modern enlightened individual who can shed light on the road before you, but check your rear view mirror to see where you have been.

Epicurean philosophy, in vogue since before 300 BC, has denied the existence of a Personal God and, alternatively, has placed a high value on sensate feelings and friendship.  As a consequence, today truth is most often considered not to be Objective – the authority of an absolute infinite-personal God, but rather subjective, what our friends let us get away with saying.  Truth now lives with its ‘friends’ in the land of “Like” on Facebook and Twitter.

Epicurean atheists and agnostics posit science – Epicurean atomism – as the beginning and end of all knowledge, declaring revelation and immortality to be romantic nonsense or the effects of too much wine.

The Long March of Cultural Marxism up to the present day disregards any absolutes and even the verities of science.  President Barack Obama declares AGW to be “settled science” when in fact Obama has no published thesis or academic record to show if he is even worthy of us contemplating such an outrageous claim.

The Long March stomps out revered traditional values and Christianity wherever such Objective Truth-based morality is found, replacing them with immediate social consciousness sound bites. And thus, subjective truth becomes a milieu of Epicurean-based malleable “truth”, worthy of Karl Marx. Marx conceived of truth (only in political-economic terms, of course) as what friends contrive when amassing social consciousness. Later, French philosopher Foucault would say the same. Thus the importance our culture now places on social media, polls and majorities, and on discrimination instead of discernment, as opposed to Objective absolute Truth.

What happens when moral courage is eschewed and truth shunned?   There is a loss of liberty.

“You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” –Jesus. But the Ruling class elites want to define truth and set the narrative.

Professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University, Angelo M. Codevilla’s National Review article Standing Up to the Ruling Class: What citizens can do to resist the ruling class’s redefinitions of moral and cultural norms speaks directly to the reality facing us, and those who have recoiled from truth-speaking:

“If you’re wondering what Americans can do as our ruling class sets about enforcing its redefinition of marriage, start by looking back at what it did to the citizens of Indiana when their legislature raised the possibility that someone might object to joining in celebrations of homosexual marriage…

Indiana’s Republicans, its churches, and conservatives in general pled for the liberty to speak and act according to religious faith. They did not and do not argue the worth of the Judeo-Christian religious beliefs that the ruling class deems odious.This has proved to be self-defeating. Appeals for tolerance of all beliefs in the name of America’s traditional freedoms fail because they concede the ruling class’s assertion of its own moral-intellectual superiority, as well as its underlying assumption that good and evil, better and worse, are just other words for its own likes and dislikes…

Consequently, if we wish to remain who we are in the face of threats and declamations meant to force us to honor intellectual and moral falsehoods, we have no alternative but clearly and loudly to distinguish between true and false, fully making the case for what we believe to be right. There is no viable alternative to confronting the ruling class’s fantasies and euphemisms substantively, in detail.

Peaceable behavior will not protect you from being hounded as a “hater.” A whiff of “offensive” attitudes is enough for the ruling class to make you as untouchable as the lepers of old. Nor is silence a refuge.” (emphasis added)

You will want to read the whole article, contemplate its message and summon moral courage.

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Jesus stood before a member of the Ruling Class, Pontius Pilate:

“What is truth?” Jesus did not bear witness to what his friends wanted him to say. Jesus did not say, as French intellectual Michel Foucalt postulated, that truth is “regime” of beliefs and values linked to systems of political and economic power, a scientific, non-universal apparatus feeding into majority opinions.” 

In the days before his foretold crucifixion, Jesus told Pilate, and his disciples previously, that He came to bear witness to all that his Father does and says.  Crucifixion was invoked by the “Crucify him!” social consciousness to silence Objective Truth – what the Father does and says.  But then Objective Resurrection occurred and Truth was exalted to the highest place – God’s right hand.

Who is your father?  The father of lies who is the grand marshal of the Long March.  Or, is it the Father in heaven? Who do you testify about?

Have you ever seen the Father rejoice over homosexuality or homosexual marriage? Jesus at the wedding in Cana showed the Father’s blessing of his creation: male and female marriage. Never once has Objective truth ever endorsed homosexuality.

The unscientific paramours of homosexuality, psychology and psychiatry, add their voice to the loudest, angriest voices on social media so as “to raise awareness” and to alter the predominate consciousness of the natural union of male and female.

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Speaking of the binary:  Truth-seekers need both reason and revelation.   Each informs the other. Both need to be declared. And, we must leave the nether land of sentimentality that keeps us entombed in darkness and ready to give up.

Start with the Objective historical facts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  There were hundreds of witnesses to the resurrection. And like Paul, we have become witnesses of the Resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus revealed truth about the Father, that there is life beyond atomism. There is immortality; life is more than the body, and incredibly more than the packaging of identity politics.

Be not afraid. Roll away the stone from your mouth. Do not remain silent. And, did not Jesus say that persecutions would come when we spoke truth? Were these persecutions based on silent acquiescence so as discern whether to be “Liked”? No. Here’s what Jesus said:

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.”

The Eternal Living light:

“The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.”  I John 1:2

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“Scripture urges us to “expose the unfruitful works of darkness” (Ephesians 5:11) and avoid becoming partners with those “who deceive with empty words” (Ephesians 5:6). Colossians implores us not to be “taken captive by deceit.” We’re warned in 2 Timothy that the time will come when people will not want to hear the truth, so they will surround themselves with frauds who tell them what their “itching ears want to hear.” I believe we have arrived at that moment, and it is now urgent that we specifically identify these frauds and false teachers. This is not a fun or polite process, but it is necessary, so we must get on with it.” (emphasis added)

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