You Still Don’t Get it?
September 28, 2026 Leave a comment
Everything he does is marvelous!
Marvelous evocative things. People around Jesus saw and heard marvelous things and were overcome with astonishment. They saw and heard evocative things but were not overcome with understanding. Their failure or unwillingness to grasp what was happening had me wonder why as I memorized the first seven chapters of Mark’s gospel account.
“What’s past is prologue”
I would have thought that a people whose whole way of life was infused with redemption history – a history retold in the synagogues with the reading of the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms and rehearsed in rituals and recalled at the feasts and festivals commemorating past events – would have recognized the marvelous evocative things that their God was doing right before their eyes and ears.
Signs and Wonders
Exodus from Egypt was God responding to the people’s outcries.
“The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out. Their cry for help rose up to God from their slavery. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them. (Exodus 2: 23-24)
God told Moses (Exodus 10: 2) that the retelling of the Exodus from Egypt was so “that your children and grandchildren will know how I have made fools of the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them—so that you may know that I am the Lord.” The annual Passover celebration with its rituals and symbolic foods permeated lives with the marvelous evocative things of God.
I would have thought that a people whose God “made known his ways to Moses and his acts to the people of Israel” would have known that their God did not act on a whim like foreign gods.
I would have thought that a people who received the gospel according to Moses – the gospel of great acts of rescue, of grace and redemption, of food and water in the wilderness – would have recognized the gospel of Jesus, announced with the marvelous evocative things he said and did.
Sighs and Willfulness
The Israelites, set free from Egyptian slavery, began their wilderness trek and their “What have you done for me lately?” grumbling and complaining. Some, rejecting a situation and a God of wonders they couldn’t control, wanted to return to the certainty of bondage.
I would have thought that a covenant people would have been sure of God’s commitment to them even in the wilderness.
Exodus Evocation Education
Jesus chose twelve disciples, out of the growing number of disciples, and called them “apostles.” The chosen were to be with him, to be sent out as heralds, and to have authority over unclean spirits. They were to have firsthand experience of the marvelous acts of God just like the twelve tribes of Isreal during the Exodus.
The apostles witnessed Jesus going throughout Galilee casting out unclean spirits and proclaiming good news – the kingdom of God has arrived!
They sat under his authoritative teaching.
They observed him healing the mute, the deaf, the blind, the paralyzed, and those with blood issues. They saw him heal all kinds of diseases.
They observed the wind and the sea being calmed by his command and watched him walking on the water.
They saw the dead being brought back to life.
And, they witnessed Jesus feeding thousands in the wilderness.
Known Knowns Left Unknown
Don’t you remember?
Mark chapter 6 relates that a crowd of well over five thousand came to hear Jesus’ teaching. Late in the day the disciples came to Jesus wanting him to send the crowd away so the people could buy food. Jesus responded “Why don’t you give them something?” The disciples were bewildered by his response.
Are you suggesting that we should go and spend two hundred dinar and get food for this lot?
With just a few loaves and fish available, Jesus feeds over five thousand people in a wilderness setting.
Right after this, Jesus makes the disciples get in the boat and head to the opposite shore. That would have given them time to reflect on what just happened but they were focused on rowing. The wind was against them.
Sometime early in the morning, the disciples see a ghost walking on the water. They are overcome with astonishment when Jesus walks up to the boat, gets in, and the wind stops. The boat makes landfall but the disciples are still at sea about the loaves and fishes. Mark says their hearts were hardened.
As I begin to memorize Mark chapter 8, I encounter an event that parallels this previous marvelous evocative food event and the same incomprehension of what is taking place:
Once again, about that time, a crowd gathered without anything to eat.
Jesus called the disciples.
“I’m really sorry for the people,” he told them. “They’ve been with me three days now and have had nothing to eat. If I send them away hungry, they will collapse on the road. And some of them have come from miles away.”
“Where could you get food for all this lot out here in the wilderness?” the disciples replied.
Again, Jesus feeds thousands of people in a wilderness setting with just a few loaves and fish.
Then, Jesus sends the crowd away, gets into a boat with the disciples and heads to the region of Dalmanoutha. When he arrives, he is confronted by the Pharisees who ask him for a sign from heaven to test him out.
During the time of testing in the wilderness, Jesus told Satan “It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Jesus refused to perform for the Pharisees. He gets in the boat and sails away.
Mark tells us that the disciples had sailed off and forgot to get bread. They had only one loaf on board. (Rowing requires carbs and there’s a lot of rowing in the Mark’s gospel account.)
Anyway, Jesus sternly warns them to “Watch out for leaven – the Pharisees’ leaven, and Herod’s leaven too!”
Clueless, the disciples mumble to each other thinking this has something to do with us not having bread.
“Why are you mumbling about not brining bread?” said Jesus, who knew what they were thinking. “Don’t you understand? Have your hearts gone hard?
“Can’t you see with your two good eyes?
Can’t you hear with your two good ears?”
-and don’t you remember? When I broke five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken bits were left over?
“Twelve,” they said.
“And the seven loaves for the four thousand – how many baskets full of bits were left over?”
“Seven,” they said.
“You still don’t get it?”
Jesus, twice the provider of food to thousands in the wilderness, is in the boat with them! And they speak of leftovers! They won’t go hungry!
The Obdurate, the Obtuse, and the Ornery
They took offense at him.
Jesus encountered in the people around him the same heart attitude that Moses and the prophets had to deal with: stubbornness, thickheadedness, and disagreeableness.
Early in the gospel account (chapter 2), Mark relates a paralytic being lowered through the roof to get access to Jesus. When Jesus tells the cripple “Your sins are forgiven,” the legal experts grumble about some guy forgiving sins. Jesus heals the crippled man to show them he could do both, but the legal experts didn’t jump for joy.
Why be callous, stupid, and bad-tempered when marvelous evocative healing grace appears?
In chapter 3, Mark relates Jesus healing a man on the sabbath. Those assembled in the synagogue were watching to see if Jesus would heal a man on the Sabbath. They wanted to frame a charge against him. Jesus senses inflexibility and asks the synagogue assembly a couple of questions.
“Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath or to do evil? To save life or to kill?”
The people remained silent. Jesus was deeply upset with their hard-heartedness. He “looked around at them angrily.”
Jesus heals the man with the withered hand. But those with a frame of reference that precludes anything outside of established patterns of behavior plotted to do away with the disrupter.
Why be unyielding, indifferent, thoughtless, and cross when marvelous evocative healing grace appears?
Mark goes on to relate in chapter 3 that Jesus’ relatives thought Jesus was out of his mind because of what he was doing and saying. And legal experts from Jerusalem were saying that Jesus cast out demons because he was possessed by an unclean spirit.
Jesus spoke to the experts in pictures. He made clear that their accusations made no sense. Then, in no uncertain terms, he warns them about blaspheming – calling the Holy Spirit an unclean spirit.
Why be inflexible, rash, and difficult when marvelous evocative saving grace appears? Why use ad hominem?
In the next chapter, Mark recounts Jesus speaking to a large crowd in parables. The parable of the Sower and the Seed describes the effects of sown seed – his words – on four types of soil – people.
Bystander types hear what he says and immediately the Accuser comes and takes away his words. Does the Accuser say “You have what you need”? The result – no connection whatsoever. The Accuser says there is no beginning and end, only today.
There are the rocky-soil types. The short-tern enthusiasts receive the word with excitement and take it in. But there is nothing below the surface to support its growth. They quickly become disillusioned (shrivel up) when the word brings them trouble or hostility. The word has not taken root.
The thorny soil types are those who hear his words but the overgrowth – the worries of the present age, the deceit of riches and the desires for other kinds of things – chokes his words and no fruit comes out of them.
And there are the ones who hear the word, take it in and produce a harvest with yields in some cases 30-fold, in some cases 60-fold, and in some cases 100-fold.
Later that same day, Jesus explains to those around him that the mystery of God’s kingdom had been given to them but for those outside, his words are in parables. This, he says, was so that outsiders may look and look but never see and hear and hear and understand, otherwise, they would turn and be forgiven.
The Sower Seed parable sorts out what grows and what doesn’t grow in the Kingdom of God before the harvest mentioned in his latter example of the kingdom of God.
When Jesus returns to his hometown synagogue (Mark 6), people are astonished with his teaching.
“Where does he get it all from? What’s this wisdom he’s been given? How does he have this kind of power in his hands?”
They take offense at the messenger.
Why be repulsed by a local man with a good reputation, good words, and good works?
The Stoney Hearts Club
Don’t you understand?
Scripture provides an honest assessment of human nature. Examples of willful hardheartedness include Cain, Pharaoh, King Nebuchadnezzar, and the children of Israel. The prophets, speaking for God, gave appraisals of the stubborn people of God. Jeremiah:
From the day that your ancestors came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day, yet they did not listen to me or pay attention, but they stiffened their necks. They did worse than their ancestors did.
The prophet Ezekiel said that God was willing to do heart surgery for the sake of his holy name:
A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
Don’t you remember?
The gospel according to Mark further details people’s unwillingness to receive what God was doing and saying. I would have thought that the people around Jesus would have carried forward in their hearts the words of Psalm 103: “God works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed.” The people of God, invested with knowledge of God’s marvelous acts, didn’t realize the Exodus taking place in the person of Jesus.
Have your hearts gone hard?
Humans can be unresponsive, indifferent, stubbornly resistant to persuasion, unyielding in thought and feeling, unwilling to change, have little to no flexibility, and be irascible, calloused, and rebellious.
Humans can resist understanding.
Humans can be driven by selfish ambition rooted in pride.
Humans can refuse accountably.
Humans can compartmentalize and hide their true nature to preserve reputation.
Humans can prioritize control over connection and refuse to be part of another’s life.
Humans can be unwilling to reconcile and seek redemption.
Humans can renew vows of hatred every day.
Humans can keep from letting God “takes us out of ourselves” (C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy).
Humans can maintain a frame of reference that is utilitarian coupled to the material and which avoids the transcendent.
Humans can live with a worldview that elevates “science” as the only means by which truth and reality can be known.
Humans can lack imagination and the willingness to embrace literature, art, music, and myth that conveys truth.
Humans can embrace the leaven Jesus spoke of. Humans can be puffed up with an inflated self-perception.
Mentally lazy humans with no depth of soil and no rootedness can sit under spiritual leaders who embrace a shallow “fluffy” feminized type of spirituality “where the existence of Christ is unknowable and all human spiritualities are equivalent made-up mythologies that attempt to understand man’s role in the cosmos.”
Humans can listen to sermons and teaching that repeats what they know and never grow in wonder and trust.
Humans can fixate on machine-like digital technology that defines everything in terms of data – ones and zeros, black or white, either/or.
Humans can give themselves to an ideology like Marxism that shuns all thoughts and understanding but its own.
Humans can lie to themselves.
Humans can be pig-headed and feel sure of themselves.
Humans can decide not to be teachable.
“Can’t you see with your two good eyes?
Can’t you hear with your two good ears?”
~~~
Scripture continues to warn about resistant, closed off, and unresponsive attitudes:
Romans 1:28 – Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.
Ephesians 4:18 – They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.
Ephesians 4: 30 –Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.
1 Thessalonians 5:19 – Do not quench the Spirit.
Hebrews 3:8 – Do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness.
~~~
The apostle Paul was a devout and learned man. He knew Jewish history. He knew the Torah. Yet, he didn’t recognize what God was about and who Jesus was. Paul hardened his heart against any new thing until one day on the Damascus Road. His eyes were opened.
After that day, Paul went away into the Arabian desert (Galatians 1) probably for three years. He spent time with the Lord and re-studied the Torah and history that pointed to Jesus and the gospel he announced with marvelous evocative words and deeds.
Later, when writing to the church at Corinth, the apostle Paul spoke of his head and heart transformation: “As a child I spoke, and thought, and reasoned like a child; when I grew up, I threw off childish ways.”
Growth and maturity and no more stomping of feet to get your way. And, once you move into maturity and into a deep conversion that “gets” Jesus, there will be a painful tearing away of the scaly dragon skin produced by a hard heart.
The arrogant, whiny, and self-centered Eustace Scrubb in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia knows all about this.
The childish and intractable, who “still don’t get it,” will continue to live in dragon skin.
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Tech bros and government leaders are saying AI will inherit the earth. Jesus taught that the meek, the teachable, will inherit the earth. Find out what that means.
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“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words “compelle intrare,” compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.”
― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
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No Country for Old Men Without Borders
June 1, 2026 Leave a comment
No Country for Old Men refers to a world that has become increasingly violent and chaotic, where traditional values and the moral compass of older generations are no longer effective or relevant. The title reflects the struggles of the aging sheriff, Ed Tom Bell, as he confronts the senseless violence and lawlessness that he feels ill-equipped to handle . . .
In the past six months I’ve come across two pastoral letters imploring Christians to think kindly toward the millions of foreign invaders who have illegally crossed our borders to appropriate our country’s resources and thereby impacting the future of our neighbors and the country.
The first (AI generated?) letter was posted “By A Country Pastor.” (Quaint, eh?) The second, from a Hispanic Anglican bishop out of California. (Surprise, surprise!). The document below is the latest missive. Like with my response to the first letter, I do not consider the current pastoral letter authoritative.
It’s not that an Anglican bishop doesn’t have authority to speak about such things. It’s just that there is nothing in the letter that compels me to change my understanding or my actions. I seek to love my neighbor as myself, I ascribe image-of-God dignity to all humans, and I hold myself and others accountable for what is done.
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Here’s the letter’s opening and my comments:
“As bishop of the Diocese of San Joaquin within the Anglican Church in North America, I write pastorally to address the subject of refugees and immigration. I recognize that immigration is a complex matter involving legal, social, and economic concerns. Yet for the Church, it is first and foremost a biblical and pastoral issue, shaped by our allegiance to Christ and our calling to make disciples of all nations (Philippians 3:20; Matthew 28:19–20).”
What brought about the need “to address the subject of refugees and immigration?”
Did narrative-edited videos on CNN and MS NOW showing ICE rounding up the bishop’s would-be disciples provoke clerical stole clutching? Was it something preachy Morning Joe Scarbourough said?
Was it some attribution of unchristian behavior onto the millions of legal citizens never wanting their neighborhoods and their country overrun with and terrorized by the worst of worst criminal aliens, international criminal gangs, drugs, and scammers?
Was it Progressivism’s predatory foray into the church? (See video below.)
“After years of global elites lecturing us about compassion, diversity, open borders, asylum, labor flows, and all the buzzwords they love to force-feed us, The Economist is suddenly admitting that voters are right to think the system has been gamed to screw us over.”
The Economist suddenly changes its immigration tune…
Is it because “The globalist machine is sputtering and losing speed. And they can hear the America First engine coming up fast right behind them”?
Was it concern that Federal grant money to NGOs was drying up?
Was it Trump derangement syndrome?
Is it because Democrats need to keep their animus toward America, its Constitution and laws, always before us, so deportation resistance has to be revved up again?
What brought about the need “to address the subject of refugees and immigration?”
After giving lip service to the complex matters immigration invokes “involving legal, social, and economic concerns” – matters established by our country’s founders for the common good that include the principle of subsidiarity, protections both physical and civil, fiscal soundness, and a legitimate process for the integration and assimilation of legal immigrants leading to citizenship – the bishop, without saying any more about the very real down-to-earth “legal, social, and economic concerns” of not dealing with the complex matters that (illegal) immigration brings down upon our families, our neighbors, our communities and our nation, goes on to place the matter of (illegal) immigration into his safe space – his otherworld jurisdiction.
The bishop, you see, has a “first and foremost” trump card: entitlement of citizenship for (illegal) immigrants – citizenship in heaven – that overrides legal citizenship status and subjugates the concerns of legal citizens to a ‘scriptural’ utility of making disciples.
I wonder. Does the bishop assume that illegal immigrants will want to assimilate and willingly accept being discipled because of compassion extended toward them? Do Islamists assimilate and become disciples of Jesus? Do gang members assimilate and become disciples of Jesus? Will the Chinese from the CCP? Will the Somalians? If a comfortable living situation is the basis for entering illegally, the immigrant will be discipled by Democrats willing to give them all kinds comfortable living on welfare in exchange for their vote.
How convenient that the San Joaquin valley is inundated with Hispanic illegal immigrants! Now they can easily be colonized as citizens of heaven and as low-cost farm workers!
You tell me. Have you read anywhere in the gospels that before Jesus ascended into heaven, he said “Go. Open your borders. Let everyone in, even your enemies. This will facilitate making disciples.”?
The two letters are the same in their “pastoral” plea to be welcoming and hospitable to the invaders, the opportunists violating the law for access to another’s property and wealth. (See The Dark Side of the Immigration Debate and The Ungrateful Immigrant below.)
The letter goes on . . .
“Holy Scripture teaches that every human being is created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26). Therefore, all people—regardless of legal status, nationality, or ethnicity—possess inherent dignity. The Bible repeatedly calls God’s people to welcome the stranger, care for the vulnerable, and extend hospitality to those in need (Leviticus 19:33–34; Matthew 25:35; Hebrews 13:2). Our Lord Himself knew the life of a refugee when the Holy Family fled to Egypt (Matthew 2:13–23).”
Here, the bishop pulls out all the “social justice” stops. His words are coded in Biblical jargon to supply the naïve reader justification for open borders. We are to trade the real-world deleterious effects of illegal immigration for a high-minded other-world compassion that unleashes chaos with the senseless violence and lawlessness that we are ill-equipped to handle.
My understanding of image-of-God “inherent dignity” involves personal accountability and responsibility for one’s human agency. It’s not a badge we put on someone to give them a ‘social justice’ pass.
Tell me. When Jesus said “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10) did he point out the inherent dignity of the thief so that we would take a compassionate view of him and his ways? Did he do this with the Pharisees or the woman caught in adultery? No. Jesus spoke of what they did against their image-of-God “inherent dignity.”
The application of “dignity,” like with applying “love,” can be used to Ok of all kinds of inordinate things, such as same-sex marriages: [IN Senator Todd} Young Op-Ed: Marriage Bill Ensures Dignity and Respect for All Hoosiers. S.J. James Martin uses “inherent dignity” to justify all kinds of unholy things
Both pastoral letters imply that foreign invaders should be treated as possessing human dignity. But do the illegal immigrants respect the inherent dignity of the ICE officers and their lawful task?
ICE has its hands full with those who resist – you know, the “strangers” who crossed the border illegally and are now putting up a fight with law enforcement. And with those “strangers” financed and deployed by Democrat NGOs to put up violent resistance. Where’s the dignity in that?
Why doesn’t the bishop publicly denounce and admonish the ICE protestors and the chaos they bring? His higher law says to speak the truth in love. Maybe he agrees with the NYT’s op-ed columnist David Brooks who says “It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising.”
“I’ll kill your whole f-cking family! Your whole f-cking family is dead!” the agitator yawped. “Your children, your wife—all dead!”
Acting AG Blanche: Anti-ICE Agitator Will Be Arrested for Threatening Agent During NJ Riot
At some point, ordinary, law-abiding people are going to get sick of the disorder protected and excused by their degenerate liberal governing elites. I will continue to ask the question “Where are the adults?”
Saying that Jesus was a refugee – is that said to invoke empathy for the refugee? How so? Mary, Joseph, and the baby traveled to Egypt under God’s protection and direction. They also remigrated home under God’s protection and direction. The Illegal immigrants can do the same.
The letter goes on . . .
“At the same time, Scripture affirms the legitimacy of nations and civil authority (Romans 13:1). A faithful Christian response must therefore hold together two truths: the responsibility of governments to uphold the rule of law and protect their borders, and the obligation to treat immigrants and refugees with justice, mercy, and compassion, in accordance with God’s law (Matthew 22:21).”
Let’s be clear. U.S. immigration laws are not unwelcoming or imposing hate. They are not anti-human anti-dignity. They, in fact, affirm human dignity by holding the people who placed themselves in the lawless positions accountable.
“Justice, mercy, and compassion” have been extended toward illegal immigrants and “refugees”:
USCIS Supports “Project Homecoming” Self-Deportation:
If you are here illegally and you want to go home, the Department of Homeland Security now offers use of the CBP Home Mobile App so that you can voluntarily self-deport. Through the CBP Home Mobile App, you receive a complimentary plane ticket home, receive a $2,600 exit bonus upon your return, and will have any unpaid fines for failing to timely depart forgiven.
But the opposite is portrayed by left-wing media. Such have a financial and political stake in promoting open borders. The opposite is also portrayed by church leadership that has accepted the media’s lies.
I agree. We are to treat all people with “justice, mercy, and compassion” in accordance with God’s will. That would include our neighbors who are having to deal with the invasion of millions of illegal aliens. There is nothing merciful, just or compassionate about an invasion of millions of foreigners into our communities.
The letter goes on . . .
“In my episcopal ordination vows, I pledged to be “gentle and merciful for Christ’s sake, to poor and needy people and to all strangers destitute of help” (BCP 2019, p. 504). Guided by that promise, I call the Church to bear faithful witness by loving our neighbors, advocating for the vulnerable, speaking the truth in love, and offering practical care to those entrusted to us (Luke 10:25–37; Matthew 5:13–16).
Who are the vulnerable? Children. Trafficked children. Exposed children.
“These children are vulnerable; they’re actually the ones who need the help,” Rivera said. “They’re brought against their will, and they have no say in where they’re going, whether it’s mom or dad, aunt or uncle, or some stranger getting something out of it.”
Border Crisis: CBP Fights Child Exploitation: Without a choice, thousands of children are forced to make a perilous journey
Open borders have been a gateway for the exploitation and oppression of human trafficking.
Open borders have been a gateway for the child trafficking.
Biden admin failed to probe more than 7,300 reports of migrant child trafficking, startling HHS findings show
Biden-Harris admin loses track of 320,000 migrant children — with untold numbers at risk of sex trafficking and forced labor
Open borders have been a gateway to make billions:
US Govt. Paid Catholic Charities $3 Billion to Traffic People across the US/Mexico Border – Public Intelligence Blog (phibetaiota.net)
Our children are now exposed to the flood of unvetted pedophiles entering the country during Biden’s (and the bishop’s watch). Arrested: Worst of the Worst
Our children are exposed to the flood of sickness entering the country during Biden’s (and the bishop’s) watch.
Open borders import disease.
New York City’s health commissioner announced last week that the influx of migrants from the southern border — more than 50,000 to New York City alone in the past year — is delivering contagious diseases, including tuberculosis and polio, to our neighborhoods.
Per the CDC: While still abroad, immigrants, refugees, and others who apply for admission to live permanently in the United States must undergo a medical examination.
Did this happen during the Biden open borders invasion? No.
Biden’s open borders are bringing contagious diseases to your neighborhood
The letter goes on . . .
“ Our Anglican tradition has long affirmed the Church’s responsibility to care for refugees and immigrants while engaging society with moral clarity and charity. Respect for civil law must always be informed and corrected by God’s higher law, which calls us to justice, dignity, and mercy.”
Again, I wonder what brought about this letter? Who is NOT engaging society with moral clarity and charity? Who is NOT “informed and corrected by God’s higher law, which calls us to justice, dignity, and mercy?” “Is it the “basket of deplorables”?
I view the deportation of the millions of foreign invaders as respect for civil law, as respect for my neighbors, as respect for “God’s higher law.”
I understand God’s higher law as that which holds people accountable with “justice, dignity, and mercy.”
The letter ends . . .
“I encourage the faithful of this diocese to live into these convictions: welcoming the stranger, discipling those within our care, and assisting immigrants and refugees to live responsibly and faithfully within our communities. I pledge to engage our diocesan leadership and civil authorities with these biblical values, and I pray for the nations of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, that we may act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.
Signed,
The Rt. Rev. Dr. Eric Vawter Menees, SSC”
If I see a stranger in my neighborhood, I say “Hi.” I try to connect.
I will continue to insist that all illegal “immigrants and refugees” be deported or remigrate home and then apply to come into the country legally.
Otherwise, our land becomes increasingly violent and chaotic, where traditional values and the moral compass of older generations are no longer effective or relevant. We will be confronted by senseless violence and lawlessness that we are ill-equipped to handle . . .
~~~
Some Thoughts
-During COVID there was a lot of Karen-like shaming going on. Not wearing a mask, not social distancing, and not vaxxing meant ridicule for not submitting to “We’re all in this together.” I get the same “get with the program” vibe from the two pastoral letters.
-There are those who think they know all about me even though they never write, call or visit. They “know” me from a distance, from what the media and church leaders present about people “like” me, as in CT’s Russel Moore (See below.) I get the same vibe from the two pastoral letters.
-That we should help the “vulnerable among us” sets up understanding illegal immigration in terms of the “oppressed” and the “oppressors.” Stay away from Marxist narratives.
-Out of context verses can be used to endorse all kinds of unscriptural church policies – from saying women should not be pastors/teachers to open borders to anything goes sexuality. Out of context, out of bounds.
-Much of what comes out of the church today about Jesus, comes from the TV. That is how some came to see Jesus as the docile, friendly, welcoming, and unwaveringly accepting Mr. Rogers. Being nice his emotional landscape and children’s. Do these same people think that ICE should take off their LE gear, put on a sweater, and say “Won’t you be my neighbor?” I will continue to ask the question “Where are the adults?”
-I once knew a female assistant rector. She saw herself as the PBS version of a female rector in an Anglican church in England – as the Vicar of Dibley. It came across in her PBS-like sermons.
-One cannot read the gospels and come away with Jesus being docile or unwaveringly accepting. Jesus didn’t accept whatever people did with their “inherent dignity” or “love.” He held people accountable. The gospel according to Progressivism doesn’t hold people accountable except for those who don’t go along with their narratives. See letter above.
Very reliable social media sources tell me that Jesus was a Progressive: he helped the vulnerable, the oppressed, and the foreigner. Why, they say that Jesus was down with socialism, abortion, LGBT-ism, social justice, DEI. Jesus was down with anything man came up with in the last five minutes to make the world a fairer and more equitable place, i.e. to make the world less God-saturated and more man-saturated.
Higher Law Bigotry
Two Judean religious leaders see a half-dead man lying on the side of the road as they walk along. A Judean had been beaten and robbed. But the two principled men stay away from “lesser” concerns to stay true to a higher law.
Someone the two religious leaders consider of low estate, as without their higher-law pedigree, comes along and helps their assaulted neighbor.
Turns out that the neighbor in Jesus’ parable is the one who sees what is going on around him and helps his neighbor. It is not the high-minded principled. And so it is with Christian leaders who ignore broken boundaries and their broken neighbors so as to observe a higher law.
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https://www.dioceseofsanjoaquin.net/news–events
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33324911
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Victor Davis Hanson:
“I live on a farm beside a rural avenue in central California, the fifth generation to reside in the same house. And after years of thefts, home break-ins, and dangerous encounters, I have concluded that it is no longer safe to live where I was born. I stay because I am sixty-five years old and either too old to move or too worried about selling the final family parcel of what was homesteaded in the 1870s.”
The Diversity of Illegal Immigration
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From my post Two Visions Three Questions:
What hard evidence do you have that an open borders policy is a good decision? Your feelings? Your empathy? Any talk about “welcoming the stranger” in the abstract is not hard evidence in support of an open borders policy. Is the evidence your need for cheap labor? Democrats Once Again Concerned About Who Will Pick Their Crops
And . . .
Lest anyone think that I am an “ignorant hillbilly” and can be known by my smell (Peter Strzok), lest anyone think that I am a rube and an uncaring Christian xenophobe nativist, and lest anyone think that I haven’t traveled outside my shire and am not cosmopolitan, know that I have traveled to many parts of the world and have met and worked with many different people during my 70+ years. I am not a misanthrope.
My travel, mostly for engineering work, included a trip to Seoul South Korea and within five miles of the DMZ, to Dhahran and Jubail Saudi Arabia and the oil fields worked by Saudi Aramco, to Warsaw and Bialystok Poland, to England during the Queen’s silver jubilee, to Rio De Janeiro, to Mexico – Tuxpan and Tampico, Mexico City, and Sonora state, to many of the provinces of Canada, including Saskatchewan when it was 40 degrees below zero, and to most of the U.S.
I did love coming home to the U.S. after each trip to some distant place.
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Podcasts:
“American Citizenship and Its Decline: Illegal Immigration and the Loss of National Sovereignty” from The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast by The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast.
Citizenship is rare in human history but essential to free government. Today, the constitutional rule of citizens in America is threatened by a new form of government, unaccountable to the people, in which power is held by a ruling class that seeks to transform our society. In this eight-lecture course, students will examine the origins and history of citizenship in the West and the grave challenges American citizenship faces today.
America’s founding principle of equality created an opportunity for people from all over the world—regardless of race or birth—to immigrate to the United States and become full citizens. This led to a system of immigration that proceeded according to established laws and required a willingness and ability to assimilate into American society. These criteria have been abandoned in favor of a system of widespread illegal immigration that erodes the rights of citizens. (Emphasis mine.)
https://podcast.hillsdale.edu/american-citizenship-and-its-decline-illegal-immigration-and-the-loss-of-national-sovereignty
https://podcast.hillsdale.edu/american-citizenship-and-its-decline-introduction
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Influence Campaigns Inside Evangelical Institutions Podcast:
https://cis.org/Parsing-Immigration-Policy/Influence-Campaigns-Inside-Evangelical-Institutions
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Eric Metaxas: Christianity Today Had an Easter Message: We’re Just … Better Than You
“Lord, I Thank Thee That I Am Not Like These Deplorables”
[CT’s Russel] Moore quotes the evangelical sociologist James Davison Hunter, who in a previous patronizing essay made the case that it is the begrudging resentment of groups who once had power that fuels our societal woes. Hunter doesn’t actually say “working-class white Christians” so much as dog-whistle it. Everything such knuckle-dragging relics do is actually only so that they might cling to what power they still have — or mebbe to yank it back from them’s what took it. . .
Cheap Amateur Psychoanalysis
Moore explains, for example, the real reason that some people want secure borders:
“In Hunter’s view, a ressentiment posture is heightened when the group holds a sense of entitlement — to greater respect, to greater power, to a place of majority status. This posture, he warned, is a political psychology that expresses itself with “’the condemnation and denigration of enemies in the effort to subjugate and dominate those who are culpable.’”
Here Moore might very well die in the irony mines, as he condemns and denigrates his own cultural enemies for … condemning and denigrating their cultural enemies. Because the rules are apparently different for the right sort of people. . .
Damn the Kulaks, Full Speed Ahead!
But buckle thy seatbelts, pilgrims, for the condescension will soar yet higher. Moore continues:
“Often, the most contentious aspects of American life center on the question ‘Who is trying to take America away from us?’— whether that be immigrant caravans overwhelming the border, the concept of American elites developing a global pandemic to control the population with vaccines, or the rhetoric of Satan-worshiping pedophile rings at the highest levels of government.”
Moore confidently assures that his critics are driven by sheer resentment — pardon me, ressentiment — and are clinging to some America in which they were top-dogs. But the positively Himalayan irony is that it is Moore and his friends in subsidized, institutional Christianity who are losing cultural power. So they’re lashing out, in essays such as this.
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Christian leaders shouldn’t be more concerned about protecting illegal aliens from ICE than protecting the religious freedom of their congregants.
https://thefederalist.com/2026/01/20/if-your-pastor-values-illegal-immigration-more-than-your-right-to-worship-find-a-new-church
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Here’s what the media does to people: James Woods: On Memorial Day, a veteran dies from being beaten to death for the way he voted – in America… – Revolver News
Where are the pastoral statements about this murder? None I suspect. This is a lesser concern and not the business of following the “higher law.”
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We are to be the Welcome Mat:
Texas state representative James Talarico compared the nation’s southern border to a “front porch,” saying it should function like a “giant welcome mat.”
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J.B. Shurk, writing at American Thinker:
Globalism Seeks to Kill the Nation-State: International government threatens the whole planet.
People are beginning to understand that those who rule in their name have long been working to eliminate the nation-state….
. . .That’s another part of internationalism’s linguistic magic trick: The same global corporate news machine that has spent the last eighty-plus years conditioning people to understand the word “nationalism” as something evil, militant, and barbaric has simultaneously conditioned the world to see anything “international” as inherently good, peaceful, and progressive. The “national / international” dichotomy didn’t happen by accident; it’s been shoved down our throats all our lives. But once again, if a rational person takes a moment to consider the semantic manipulation, it is quite absurd.
. . . internationalism’s true intent: Internationalists are building a global empire. This empire is authoritarian (because it demands global compliance at the expense of personal freedom) and totalitarian (because it requires complete subservience to a centralized and dictatorial global government). There is nothing “democratic” or “representative” about this international system of governance. It has no interest in protecting an individual’s rights and freedoms. It has no interest in respecting a nation’s sovereignty. It will permit both individuals and nations to be raped in the name of “global peace.”
Therefore, it makes perfect sense why the United Nations encourages mass illegal immigration into the United States and Europe. When you are in the business of destroying nations, you do not care if murderers and rapists destroy local families. You do not care if Islamic terrorists burn down Christian churches. You do not care if the “newcomers” to Europe and America have pledged to conquer the West. (Emphasis mine.)
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E. Jeffrey Ludwig, writing at American Thinker:
Illegal Is Legal, Immoral Is Moral – American Thinker
[American society is] also are contending with millions of foreign nationals who were admitted illegally during President Joe Biden’s administration, whom Democrats defend against being rounded up and deported. This expulsion of illegals is an affirmation of our legal system, which has set up rules for legal entry into the USA. The rules were approved by our legislative system, but now and for the four years of the previous administration, those laws are being denied and repudiated by one of our two major parties. The Democrats are doing what they can to defund the offices of government responsible for rounding up those illegals. They are encouraging illegal behavior yet do not believe that a stigma is attached to that intention.
They are sentimentalizing immigration laws as though our already generous laws were overly strict and against the pro-immigration traditions of the USA. Illegal entry by “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” is being propagandized as being more “moral” than obedience to the legitimately passed laws. (Emphasis mine.)
Suicidal Empathy is Killing the West
In the new book Suicidal Empathy, evolutionary behavioral scientist and professor Gad Saad makes the case that the West’s most celebrated virtue has been weaponized, mis calibrated, and taken to a place that is actively destroying the societies it claims to protect.
“ . . . the “West’s elitist progressive political class is infected by a mind parasite that causes its empathy module to misfire in every conceivable manner. Many of the policy decisions that are wreaking havoc in the West stem from this poor calibration of empathy, resulting in a society that is galloping toward the abyss of infinite lunacy.”
The Road To Hell Is Being Paved With Suicidal Empathy
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This Is NOT what Jesus would do:
New York City shouldn’t be flooded with filthy water, garbage, or aggressive illegal foreigners.
“When you first watch the video, you’d think this was some filthy, chaotic scene from Bangladesh.
“But sadly, this isn’t Bangladesh.
“It’s Canal Street in New York City.
“Yep, the Big Apple looks downright rotten, folks. And the kicker is that this is basically a no-go zone for Americans.
“And before the “refugee welcome” crowd starts screaming about how America was a nation shaped by immigrants. We know about the olden days. But the Ellis Island era worked because there was an expectation of assimilation. People came here, brought parts of their culture with them, and still understood they were joining something that already existed.
“That’s not what this clip looks like.
“This looks like a city that has stopped enforcing any American standards whatsoever. It looks like an illegal street economy operating out in the open, and it also looks like counterfeit goods, sidewalk chaos, territorial vendor control, illegals, foreigners, and Americans citizens being chased away from streets in their own country.” (Emphasis mine.)
Look at this horrific street in a popular US city. American citizens aren’t welcome… – Revolver News
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The wolves – Globalism and Progressivism – have snuck into the church dressed in sheep’s clothing.
When Progressivism snuck into the Anglican church I was attending in Illinois via a female Wheaton college professor who became an assistant rector, I left. I knew the woke virus was already overtaking the congregation.
Progressive Christians believe “God is bigger than our borders, bigger than our language, bigger than our certainty.”
Megan Basham: How Progressivism Creeped into Evangelical Churches
Megan Basham: When Progressive Foundations Fund Evangelism
The political projects men like Christianity Today editor Russell Moore and New York Times columnist David French undertake involve a contradiction. While lamenting how partisan American Christianity has become (frequentlyaccusing other evangelicals of shilling for “Christian Nationalism”), they continue to launch and participate in programs designed, albeit covertly, to inject progressive politics into the church. (Emphasis mine.)
Progressive Powerbrokers & Corruption in the American Church | with Megan Basham
How Naivety Is Allowing Unbiblical Progressivism Into Evangelical Churches
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Filed under 2026 Current Events, Christianity, Culture, Globalism, human trafficking, Immigration, Political Commentary, Progressivism, The Church Tagged with American Values Coalition, Christianity, church, culture, Globalism, God, Immigration, J29 Coalition, Jesus, progressivism, The Anglican Church in North America