Ramparts

April 13, 2025 Leave a comment

A few days before he would lay down his life to deal with the problem of evil, Jesus made the ascent to Jerusalem, not Rome. When he came near and saw the city, he wept over it. The city of peace would reject the Prince of Peace for the preservation of antipathy to any rule but its own.

Jesus came to his own and his own, with messianic hopes, wanted the evil in their lives – imperial Rome with its emperor worship and rule of Judea – to be dealt with. His own would also reject the testimony about him given by the prophets and John the Baptist. His own would deal with the landowner’s son to claim everything for themselves.

To acknowledge Jesus – what was said of him and what he said and did and who he claimed to be – meant acknowledging the evil within their own control. There were only two possible responses to the claims: repentance or rejection.

Jesus came to his own and found people who responded with hatred in the presence of goodness and who sought to destroy the good insofar as it was in their power to do so. They were not aware of their own evil and avoided any such awareness of it. They considered themselves above reproach and lashed out at Jesus for his reproach of them.

They were threatened by the spiritual health of those around them and refused to tolerate the sense of their own sinfulness. They would destroy others to maintain their appearance of moral-purity. They deemed others unfit, unclean, and unworthy but refused any self-examination that would reveal the evil within themselves. Pride was their rampart.

These exercised political power with man-made traditions – religious obligations and taboos – and status quo policing in order to crush and demolish any spiritual life beyond their control. They built societal barriers to keep belief in check.

Jesus confronted and named their evil antilove first hand:

Legal experts grumbled that it was blasphemous for Jesus to say “Your sins are forgiven” to a paralytic who, with help from four friends, descended from an opened celling for healing. The “experts” were ready to pounce and cripple Jesus’ ministry for acting God-like. Jesus healed the cripple showing them that he had the authority on earth to forgive sins. Mk. 2: 1-12

Legal experts from the Pharisees became offended when they saw Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus told them that “It is the sick who need a doctor. I came to call the bad people, not the good.” Mk 2:14-17

Like those in Jesus’ parable about a victim of a robbery, the “experts” thought “Better to be separated from that than to get involved with unclean rabble.” Rather than seek the recovery and redemption of others, they will actually destroy others in the cause of protecting their own laziness and to preserve the integrity of their sick self.

People took note when they saw that John the Baptist’s disciples and the Pharisees’ disciples were fasting. They wanted to know why Jesus’ disciples didn’t get with the fasting program. These people had been taught to judge people with religious protocols. Why weren’t the questioners fasting? Mk 2:18-20

One sabbath Jesus and his disciples were walking through a cornfield. The disciples plucked corn to eat as they went along. This really bothered the Pharisees. They confronted Jesus asking “Why are they doing something illegal on the sabbath?”

Jesus reminded them of their history: David and his men, when distressed and hungry, ate the bread of the presence which only the priest is allowed to eat. Jesus then flipped the script on them, saying “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.”

Though the religious police tried to throw up a man-made barrier against the good, in this case grabbing food to eat in a field, Jesus pushed back with the real intent for the sabbath rest – delighting in all that is good, just as God had done after six days of giving functions to the material cosmos. Mk 2: 23-27

On another sabbath Jesus went to the synagogue. People were watching to see if Jesus would heal the man with a withered hand on the sabbath so they could frame a charge against him. Jesus called the man to the front of the room.

He then asked those in attendance “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath or to do evil? To save life or to kill?” He waited and then asked, “If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?” Unable to answer they remained silent. Mk 3: 1-6

Here was the essence of antilove they had been taught to submit to and emulate by those who, with a form of godliness, put up barriers to the spiritual health of others. On this day it revealed itself as a spiritual disability – the inability to show lovingkindness.

They gave priority to sabbath rules and the sabbath police and to their own well-being and status within their community and not to extending themselves for the physical and spiritual well-being of another.

Their hardheartedness made Jesus deeply upset. He looked around at them angrily. Then he healed the man’s hand. With this, the Pharisees – feeling a slap in the face – went off and collaborated with a political group to find a way to destroy Jesus. They sought to destroy the good insofar as it was in their power to do so. Mk 3: 1-6

Crowds constantly swarmed Jesus. He and the disciples were not able to have a meal. His family heard this and said “He’s out of his mind.” They, no doubt, thought that Jesus’ behavior would cause them to incur the disapproval of religious authorities and be kicked out of their synagogue into social isolation. This, in spite of the good that he was doing throughout Galilee. Preservation of self- status and inclusion – was important to them. Mk 3: 20-21

Legal experts showed up from Jerusalem. To get things back under their control they said of Jesus “He’s possessed by Beelzebul! He casts out demons by the prince of demons!” While they took action to preserve the integrity of their sick selves with projection, Jesus was plundering the “strong man’s house” right in their neighborhood. Mk 3: 22-30

When Jesus came to his home region, he began to teach in the synagogue on the sabbath. Those in attendance – townspeople who knew his family – were amazed at what they heard and took offense at him. For, they were ready for the same o ‘ same o ‘ sabbath and not for anything that disrupted status quo. Maintaining status quo, appearances, and antipathy was more important than spiritual growth.

Jesus said “Prophets are honored everywhere except in their own country, their own family, and their own home. Mk 6: 1-4

Pharisees and legal experts circled Jesus. They had seen some of his disciples eating with unwashed hands. This was against the tradition of the elders. They questioned Jesus wanting to know what’s up with that. Jesus calls them hypocrites and reads them the riot act from Isaiah:

With their lips this people honor me,

But with their hearts they turn away from me;

All in vain they think to worship me;

All they teach is human commands.

Jesus goes on to give them a prime example of them abandoning God’s commands and replacing them with human traditions that nullify God’s word.

Practicing human traditions gave religious leaders a pretense of righteousness. It also gave them leverage over the people and provided them the means to patrol them while avoiding any self-examination that would reveal the evil within themselves. They had fortified their evil selves with human commands while invalidating God’s word. Mk 7: 1-13

One day the Pharisees came to Jesus and wanted to test him out. They demanded a sign. They couldn’t see with their two good eyes. They couldn’t hear with their two good ears. The feeding of the five thousand and the four thousand, the healings, exorcisms, resurrections and authoritative teaching were not good enough for them. Antilove is blind and deaf in the presence of goodness. Mk 8: 11-12

 When Jesus asked his disciples “Who do people say that I am?” Peter spoke up: “Messiah!”

But then Jesus told the disciples that there was big trouble up ahead – Jerusalem trouble as in “The elders, chief priests, and the scribes are going to finalize their rejection of me with death” – Peter began to scold Jesus, putting up resistance to the thought that their new-found messiah would die and not overthrow Roman rule in Judea and take his place as king. Mk 9: 31-33

Jesus had to scold Peter. His human thoughts were not Gods’ thoughts. The test had presented itself again.

A few years before his ascent to the “holy city”, it was to the pinnacle of the temple that Satan, Antilove Itself, brought Jesus to test him.

Jesus didn’t take Satan’s bait. He didn’t jump to reassure himself of His Father’s words. And though Adam, the father of humanity, failed a similar test by testing what God said, Jesus would not. Nor would he make a spectacle of himself for Satan or before a palm branch-waving crowd.

When he came near and saw the city, he wept over it and said of his own . . .

“If only you’d known on this day – even you! – what peace meant. But now it’s hidden, and you can’t see it. Yes, the days are coming upon you when your enemies will build up earthworks all around you, and encircle you, and squeeze you in every direction. They will bring you crashing to the ground, you and your children with you. They won’t leave one single stone on another, because you didn’t know the moment when God was visiting you.” Luke 19: 41-46

Antilove would reject the One that would lay down his life for his own. The ramparts of antipathy to any rule but its own would be torn down.

~~~~~

“The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.” – George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce

~~~~~

Brain Rot: What Our Screen Are Doing to Our Minds (3)

In the third podcast of this series, “Brain Rot: What Our Screen Are Doing to Our Minds,” host Dr. Karyne Messina, psychologist, psychoanalyst and author talked about the problems that can emerge in Erik Erikson’s Identity versus Identity Diffusion stage of development along with Dr. Harry Gill, a psychiatrist who has a PhD in neuroscience. The two mental health professionals discussed major difficulties they see in their young patients when they are exposed to too much screen time. . .

They also focused on the impact of social media on the formation of identity, a critical part of healthy personality development. Drs. Messina and Gill shared the challenges young people have navigating in the digital age, which can include exposure to people who are inauthentic on social media, role confusion, and addiction to video games. They emphasized the importance of limiting screen time, encouraging adolescents to have real-life experiences versus having mainly on-line relationships while fostering healthy habits to support brain development and overall well-being during this crucial stage of development.

Brain Rot: What Our Screen Are Doing to Our Minds (3)

Brain Rot: What Our Screen Are Doing to Our Minds (3) – New Books Network

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Filed under Christianity, Evil, Palm Sunday Tagged with , , , , , ,

Evil’s Last Grasp

February 22, 2025 Leave a comment

“Dog Bites Man.” Not news. Madness – “Man Bites Dog” – is a headline! And so is nauseating “ultra-violence” (a term used in the disturbing A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick’s film version of Anthony Burgesses’ book).  To wit, a small sample of recent “ultra-violence” revelations in the headlines:

Cops identify NJ woman as mystery straphanger torched to death in horrific NYC subway attack

A homeless woman in the NYC subway was set on fire by an illegal immigrant who fanned the flames and then calmly watched her burn to death from a bench on the platform.

And, A mob attack at Edina Southdale YMCA leaves teen with brain injury

And, Metro-North rider stabbed in chest after complaining about loud music on passenger’s phone

And, NYC postal worker stabbed to death over food.

And, Transgender Teen Charged with Plotting Valentine’s Day School Massacre.

And, with taxpayer money, USAID funded Boko Haram slaughter of Christians in Nigeria – LeoHohmann.com

And, 70 Christians beheaded in church by Muslims.

To keep “ultra-violence” going Biden admin released 11 Yemeni detainees with suspected al Qaeda ties from Guantanamo Bay — including two alleged former bin Laden bodyguards

And, 158 DEMOCRATS VOTED AGAINST DEPORTING SEX OFFENDERS

Day after day headlines reveal man-made horrors beyond our comprehension and of absurdities that become received wisdom. Two more recent headlines:

Warrant executed for ‘child pornography’ at Texas Modern Art Museum’s LGBTQ exhibit… – Revolver News

Fauci approved $240 million for sexual mutilation (transgender) experiments on animals.

Shocking and bizarre evil permeates the moral order of the universe. And it is not ideological ordinariness, as seen by Hannah Arendt in her Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil:

Perhaps our age does not like the idea of evil or does not know what to make of it. And yet if there is one thing that we ought to be able to do, it is to identify true evil—the profundity of evil—when we see it. In our own day, it is put on display for all to see by death-cults like Hamas. – “The profundity of evil,” by Douglas Murray

‘Pure Evil’: Hamas Hands Over Remains of Dead Israeli Mother, Toddler & Infant

Hamas holds public celebration to hand over murdered babies in coffins.

Along with the use of extreme force to hurt or kill people, evil in the form of disorder, lies, chaos, corruption, grift, and utter perversion is in the news.

Here in America, the Progressive Blue Beast, allied with the primeval source of all opposition to God, refuses to give up its hold on its imperial capital. With the aid of the imperial cult propaganda machine – the main stream media – it whines, panders for sympathy and looks for ways to claw back power to continue its rule of tyranny.

It wasn’t long ago when the same propaganda machine told us to “trust (worship) the science.” We were told to pay homage to the idol the Blue Beast had created with masking, social distancing, and vaxxing the COVID mRNA spike protein vaccine into our bloodstream.

(Did you know? Yale Scientists Confirm Covid ‘Vaccines’ Cause VAIDS – Slay News  VAIDS = vaccine-acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. One has to wonder if the COVID vax was used for population control. Was it used to keep the population weak, sick, and controlled? To create complete dependency on Big Pharma’s “science?”)

Remember, the Blue Beast told us to believe in the Russian collusion hoax and in many other lies that came from its mouth.

The last four years of the Biden regime and the eight years of Obama have given us a eye-opening look at the direction and speed with which evil can overtake aspects of our lives. The evil processes of the Blue Beast from those days have become so entrenched that activist federal judges are blocking the eradication of it from government. (Be aware that programs like discriminatory DEI, like all of evil’s deceptive programs, is the moral opposite of (social) justice. See Solzhenitsyn quote below.)

The Blue Beast worships power and itself and tolerates no rivals. Evil in all of it various forms (serpent, dragon, and human) and devices, and throughout time, worships power and itself. Evil tolerates no rivals, and certainly not the Risen and Conquering Christ that the prophecy of Revelation testifies about.

~~~

First century Christians, without newspapers and headlines, saw and heard about violence, oppression, and idolatries in the Roman Empire. Their world, like ours and Job’s, seemed arbitrarily mean, capricious and unfair.

These early Christians knew the enemies of God in terms of satanic forces invested in polytheism, the Roman empire’s tyranny, the imperial cult propaganda and the pressure to submit to it. And, there were those preaching another gospel other than the one they received from the apostles. The power of evil was all around them and they were looking for a divine rescue.

They were also likely aware of gospel accounts of Jesus exorcizing unclean spirits and plundering the strong man’s house (Mk 3:27). For them, awaiting Christ’s imminent return, these accounts prefigured a final victory over evil and the final realization of the kingdom of God on earth. Into that context at the end of the first century, seven struggling churches in a Roman province in Asia received a wake-up call, the letter of Revelation.

The letter begins by addressing issues in each church through a prophetic word. There’s critique of a church’s waywardness, its false teaching, its lethargy and compromises. And there are warnings to get each church on track to be victorious. The letter effectively summons each church to get involved in the divine war against evil and to conquer, conquer, conquer, conquer, conquer, conquer, conquer (Rev. 2:7; 2:11; 2:17; 2:28; 3:5; 3:12; 3:21).

How they are to conquer and what victory means is described in the rest of the letter. (Hint: conquering in Revelation has nothing to do with how the world conquers. And victory? There’s a promise that comes at the end of the letter referring to what was promised at the beginning of the letter to each church that conquers (Rev. 21:7).

You will want to read the whole of Revelation in one sitting to find out about Evil’s Last Grasp (cf. Gen. 3:15) and whether the three petitions of the Lord’s prayer are fulfilled. Is God’s name hallowed? Does his Kingdom come? Is God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven?

What would be the Final Headline and will you be one of those who were victorious over the beast? (Rev. 15:2)

~~~~~

The Big Reveal

Everyone who does evil hates the light; people like that don’t come to the light, in case their deeds get shown up and reproved. -The Gospel According to John 3:20

2025: The most transparent administration in American history is following the money . . .

The recent incursion of DOGE into the labyrinth of government has made headlines. As DOGE sheds light on what lurks there, deep state denizens are scurrying to use measures to hide their dark ways:

Eruption In “BleachBit,” “Wipe Hard Drive,” “Offshore Bank” Searches In DC Suggest Deep State Panic Mode | ZeroHedge

DC Internet Searches For “Criminal Defense Lawyer” & “RICO Law” Erupt As DOGE Drains Swamp

Martha Bueno on X: “These Senators voted AGAINST cutting the federal budget $1.5 trillion dollars. They say they want accountability but vote against it. Which one is the biggest hypocrite here? https://t.co/E8GhjljHZ2” / X

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As in A Clockwork Orange, where a government agency works to rehabilitate the violent criminal Alex with an experimental aversion therapy, the World has had ongoing attempts at manipulating humans with mind control programs. Such are the CIA psyops, MSM propaganda, AI, brain chips, transhumanism, and more.

How Did Communism Get into the Corporations

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Podcast:

Andrew Klaven with Megan Basham discuss her book, Shepherds for Sale.

Churches are being infiltrated – Megan Basham with Andrew Klaven

~~~~~

The evil that State media doesn’t report: Democrats illegally allowed into our country over 12,000,000 unvetted (and unvaccinated) aliens. The migrants were brought in for Democrat’s purposes: to consolidate Democrat power with votes and to support Democrat’s billionaire benefactors with low-cost workers. The illegals are to become serfs serving their welfare state lords.

The open borders madness was aided by Progressives in pulpits and by USAID-funded NGOs who participated and became rich (nonprofit Catholic Relief Services received $4.6 billion, cf. Rev. 3:14–22 ) helping the ‘poor little foreigner’ based on some misconstrued scripture.

It is certainly costs nothing to be ‘magnanimous’ and free with other people’s taxed money, property, freedom, safety, and our vulnerable children when sitting in your safe neighborhood virtue signaling the ‘goodness’ of open borders and ‘helping’ the ‘poor little foreigner’ in a social media text or a sermon.

You will hear from the creepy SJ James Martin on ‘X’ that “Caring for migrants and refugees Is not optional.” This kind of debauched out-of-context and Christian-sounding mumbo-jumbo for the ‘other’, directed toward the gullible – SJWs, suburban women, soy boys, and the like – is used by Martin to justify open borders, not just of our country but also for all kinds of sexual perversion in the church. Have you heard of the Lavender Mafia?

U.S. Catholic Church Spends $5 billion on 16,276 Clergy Sex Abuse Allegations in 20 Years

Four in five victims were male and one-fifth of the victims were female, the survey recorded, confirming reports by The Stream and other experts of a “lavender mafia” dominating the Latin-rite Roman Catholic priesthood.

Beware These 3 Lavender Mafias Outside the Church| National Catholic Register

 Myopic, naïve, unwise, illegal, and compromised ‘compassion’ does more harm than good. Self-righteous compassion under the guise of “social justice” has become more important than the greater good.

Of course, if you speak out against open borders you are called “mean”, “racist”, a “xenophobe”, “unscriptural’, and more.

Apparently, ‘compassionately’ aiding and abetting foreigners in breaking U.S. law and thereby importing violence, narco-terrorism, fentanyl deaths, criminal gangs, drugs, felons, pedos, all kinds of disease, and economic migrants who flee their own country for a better ‘opportunity’ is OK as long as you help the “vulnerable” plunder and gut America and disregard the fact that our neighbors are made vulnerable to the above and to the chaos, disorder, disease, and cost that open borders causes.

Democrats have “invited every microbe on the planet onto our soil. And, now we are facing the consequences.”

Deporting Illegals Is A Good First Step, But Unfortunately The Microbes They Brought With Them Will Stay

The Immorality of Illegal Immigration – Victor Davis Hanson

Todd Bensman Discusses the Costs of Illegal Immigration

Interview with Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: The Pope’s Accusations Against the Trump Government are False and Delusional

More plundering of America enabled by the wicked. Activist federal judge is blocking deportation. His wife is “appears to be the former Vice President of National Immigration Forum, a pro-open borders advocacy group.”

“George Soros’s Open Society Foundation is also reportedly the group’s largest donor.”

~~~~~

“To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions…
Ideology—that is what gives the evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.”

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

Filed under 2025 Current Events, apocalypse, Christianity, Culture, Immigration, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, Revelation, Revelation Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Daylight on the Garden of Good and Evil

March 19, 2023 Leave a comment

In the early chapters of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, we are introduced to the winsome character Stiva Oblonsky. With a smile and self-possessed mannerisms, he draws the attention and affections of many. He comes across as likeable, amiable and nothing out of the ordinary – as one of us. Yet, the first thing we read is that Stiva has thrown his household into chaos.

We immediately learn that he has been unfaithful to his wife, Dolly. He’s had an affair with their children’s former governess. We go on to learn that Stiva is remorseful of the exposure of the affair but has not one iota of remorse about what he has done: “He repented only that he had not done a better job of concealing this fact from his wife.”

When confronted by a note exposing his adultery, Stiva worried more about his response than about the hurt he caused his wife. The narrator gives us insight into that moment:

“Instead of taking offense, disavowing it, justifying himself, begging forgiveness, even feigning indifference – anything would have been better than what he did do! – his face, quite involuntarily (“the reflexes of the brain,” thought Stepan Arkadyevich, who was fond of physiology), suddenly, and quite involuntarily, broke into his usual good-nature, and thus foolish, smile.”

Stiva passes the blame for the mess he’s in: “That foolish smile of mine is to blame for everything”. It is his smile that first endeared him to Dolly. And now, as a response that appears to mock remorse, the smile allows Dolly to begin to see what lies behind Stiva’s beguiling demeanor.

Stiva’s evil is not the blatant action-taking evil. History has a record of such people. Rather, it is the absence of good. Stiva forgets, neglects, and fails to act. We get a sense of this in Part III, chap. 7:

“No matter how hard Stepan Arkadyevich (Stiva) tried to be a concerned father and husband, he never could remember that he had a wife and children.”

Remembering is unresolved grief. It’s not for a committed hedonist such as Stiva. He would never embrace suffering. And remembering brings guilt and guilt is suffering, so he is willing to tolerate a sense of sin to get on with life. Life’s unpleasantries are a bother. His forgetfulness is achieved with a smile and social acceptance. Stiva “was the familiar friend of everyone with whom he took a glass of champagne, and he took a glass of champagne with everyone”.

Behind Stiva’s good-natured smile is what Tolstoy described as “the liberalism of the blood”.  Stiva fostered an easy-going liberal mindset:

“Stepan Arkadyevitch took and read a liberal newspaper, not a radical one, but one advocating the viewpoint maintained by the majority. And even though neither science, nor art or politics held any particular interest for him, he firmly maintained the same views on all these subjects that were maintained by the majority and by his paper, and he changed them only when the majority changed them, or, better put, he did not change them at all; they imperceptibly changed within him . . .

“And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain.”

Reading further, we find Tolstoy contrasting the ordinariness of self-giving love, as expressed by Dolly, with the ordinariness of Stiva’s self-satisfying evil, expressed without ill-will or bitterness. Making waves would disrupt his complacency and the slight fog diffused in his brain.

For many years I’ve enjoyed reading Russian literature. Russian history has veered toward extremes – totalitarianism and atheism produced by the intelligentsia aka politically connected radical socialist atheists. Russian literature offers a window into the life and times of Russia, its people, and the thinking that led to so much suffering.

Realism abounds in the works of Solzhenitsyn, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. Ultimate questions and meaning of life issues are openly dealt with. No AI. No BLM, CRT, LGBTQ, pandering, no Wokey-dokey or playing with pronouns. Just serious adult things.

With Anna Karenina Tolstoy portrays prosaic good and evil, self-deception, and the nature of love – the seemingly fate-occurring dramatic love of romance vs. the committed non-trumpeting prosaic love that does good, i.e., cares for the family. With more than a dozen major characters and around 800 pages, the novel fleshes out the first line: “All happy families resemble one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Once you read Anna, I think you’ll find that Tolstoy’s characters, including the absence-of-good Stiva, are not unique. You may find yourself in their stories and perhaps the impetus for change.

*****

Consider that Stiva is the first transhumanist. Look at his utter acquiescence to whatever is printed and accepted by the majority. And look at his attitude– cooly dispassionate and compliant. He’s a non-entity with a pasted-on smile.

*****

I coined the term “pornservatives” to describe the type of person who on paper or in person looks like a good old-fashioned red-state conservative, but in practice is living a morally dubious lifestyle antithetical to anything that resembles “conservatism” or “trad” values.

Hicklibs on Parade – The American Mind

*****

Tell me, where is the wisdom when you promote experimental COVID vaccines and refuse to promote safe, effective, and cheap repurposed drugs? (REPORT) US heath officials hid urgent recommendation to use ivermectin for Covid | Sharyl Attkisson

“So [the effect of the COVID vaccine] is negative, and that continues. The magnitude of that negativity increases over time. What does that mean, folks? It literally means that the people who received that vaccine were more likely to contract COVID-19 after seven months than the people who did not. That is a fact, has the CDC or FDA ever said a word about that? No.”

“I’m Not Sure Anyone Should Be Taking Them” – Florida Surgeon General Declares mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines Have a “Terrible Safety Profile” (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit

Tell me, where is the wisdom of financially befitting – with tax-payer dollars –  NGOs like Catholic Charities who are doing the bidding of godless globalists under the pretense of Christian charity? Such groups aid and abet illegal border crossings which undoubtedly involve the trafficking of children, of criminals and of fentanyl? Such involvement serves to dilute and weaken the U.S. with an America hating Progressive/Globalist agenda.

Tell me, where is the wisdom when you employ out-of-control spending and money printing that leads to expected out-of-control consequences such as inflation and devaluation of the dollar?

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has been embraced by progressives, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who see MMT as the means for increased government spending that could help finance initiatives such as the Green New Deal policy on climate change and, of course, buy votes.

MMT says that a government can basically blow as much money as it wants to boost its economy as long as that government borrows in its own currency because it can always just print more money. This allows the government plenty of room for free spending without forcing it to raise taxes. It also means it would be impossible for that government to default on its debts.

“The central idea of MMT is that governments with a fiat currency system under their control 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.” – Modern Monetary Theory (MMT): Definition, History, and Principles (investopedia.com)

“According to MMT, the only limit that 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. (Emphasis mine)

The Failure of MMT Is Now Evident (noqreport.com)

And so it is the political decision of Democrats and Globalists to leave the southern border wide open for the infusion into the economy of low-cost workers to help finance MMT spending for such progressive legislation as universal healthcare and other public programs for which governments claim to not have enough money to fund:

During the past 25 years, low interest rates and highly expansionary monetary policy with little apparent inflation have created the illusion that a government can simply print money to fund exorbitant deficit spending with no repercussions. This core tenet of so-called “modern monetary theory” ignores the fact that deficit spending is constrained in the long run by a government’s ability to satisfy creditors. (Emphasis mine)

MMT and Government Finance: You Can’t Always Get What You Want | Richmond Fed

*****

Informed Dissent:

“I Was Severely Injured by the Moderna Vaccine” – Former Pussycat Dolls Member Shares Her Vaccine Injury Story (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit

UPDATE: Contracts Released For CDC Purchasing Of Phone Data To Track Americans’ Compliance With COVID Lockdowns | The Gateway Pundit

Too many doctors and nurses to count in recent months have told me about the alarming rise in sudden cancers in young people since the introduction of the experimental COVID vaccines.

“Turbo Cancer” Comes For The Vaccinated (substack.com)

(REPORT) US heath officials hid urgent recommendation to use ivermectin for Covid | Sharyl Attkisson

TRAGIC: 37-Year-Old Italian Swimmer Reportedly Took His Own Life After a Long Period of Suffering Due to COVID Vaccine Reaction | The Gateway Pundit

Chicago:

Indiana:

We need your help to protect parental rights in Indiana! HB1407 is the bill we emailed you about a few weeks ago that protects parents’ rights to direct the care and upbringing, education, health care, and mental health of their minor children. The bill passed through the House at the end of February, but with concerns held by a few judges. The bill’s author, Rep. Dale DeVon, advocated hard for the bill on the House floor and thankfully, the bill passed through to the Senate.

Sadly, several groups are trying to kill this important piece of legislation, despite Rep. DeVon’s assurances that the judges who have reservations would be able to testify in the Senate committee, as well as his vow to work with them on amendments that would resolve their concerns.

HB1407 is a parental rights bill that protects parents’ rights to direct the care and upbringing, education, health care, and mental health of their minor children. The bill passed through the House at the end of February, but with concerns held by a few judges. The question is whether the Senate will hear and pass the bill despite the judges’ concerns.

Take action here to support HB1407>>>>

INDIANA: Parental rights bill in danger | Stand for Health Freedom

Health Freedom Advocacy Center | Stand For Health Freedom

Under the guise of “health education” the grant focused on coercing those in poorer communities to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Florida’s Collier County rejects CDC/NIH grant, logging an important win for health freedom | Stand for Health Freedom

Canada:

Where are other pastors like Pastor Derek Reimer? Are they hiding behind Romans 13?

Read this for background on above >>>>

Breaking: Calgary pastor arrested protesting new law limiting anti-drag show demonstrations – Rebel News

J6 FedSurection:

HE HAS THE PROOF: DC Gulag Political Prisoner and Decorated Army Special Forces Soldier Jeffrey McKellop Reveals Extent of Government Agents at J6 Capitol Protest – IT WAS A COMPLETE SET-UP! (Audio) | The Gateway Pundit

DOJ Claims Trump Tweet Started Jan 6, but Bodycam Suggests Tear Gas Sparked Crowd – Valiant News

J6 Political Prisoner Matthew Webler: The FBI Raided His Home After He Walked into the US Capitol with a Flag – Then Feds Came Back and Took His Son | The Gateway Pundit

Ugh! Mike Pence:

Mike Pence Pandering To D.C. Media Is Pathetic And Disqualifying (thefederalist.com)

In caving to corporate and elite pressure to “fix” Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Gov. Mike Pence and the rest of the state’s laughingstock Republican leadership have ironically bungled into amending it in a way that now makes Indiana the most hostile state in the country to the conscience rights the original law was designed to protect.

Indiana Is Now The Most Hostile State To Religious Freedom (thefederalist.com)

Professor: Indiana RFRA ‘Fix’ Could Send Christians to Jail (breitbart.com)

The Netherlands:

The strength of green feeling here, both for and against, is a bellwether for the struggle to come in other countries and farming economies. But BBB [the Farmer Citizen Movement (BoerBurgerBeweging] should not be dismissed as ‘anti-green’; rather farmers are more of a lime green versus the dark green of the eco activists, both of whom claim they want to protect the land. 

Dutch farmers’ party secures landslide victory – The Post (unherd.com)

Unchanged Climate Change:

Banking Climate Change:

WSJ oped discusses why Silicon Valley Bank failed (unusualwhales.com)

Woke Silicon Valley Bank Gave Over $73 Million to Black Lives Matter Movement | The Gateway Pundit

Congress Takes Brief Pause From Sending All Your Tax Dollars To Ukraine To Send Them To Silicon Valley Bank | Babylon Bee

Why would anyone use a Tier 2 Bank… – CITIZEN FREE PRESS

“It doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s still privatizing the gains and socializing the losses.

So is your $250,000 bank guarantee you currently enjoy.

You have to have a deposit guarantee.”

“Biden’s Spending, Leads to the Biden Inflation, That Leads to the Biden Bonds, that Leads to the Biden Banks” – Steve Bannon Puts Entire Blame for Massive Financial Crisis We Are In Today on Biden | The Gateway Pundit

*****

Filed under 2023 current events, Climate change, Globalism, Literature, Political Commentary, Politics, Russian Literature, Short Story Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Not All Roads Lead Home

October 30, 2022 Leave a comment

In truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing more frightful than the figure of Goodman Brown.

Before the Technicolor fairy tale of a quartet of troubled characters trekking through a foreboding forest hoping to gain what they lack from the “great and powerful” Self-Gnosis (The Wizard of OZ), there is a tale of a young man taking a similar journey. And though there is no fear of “lions and tigers and bears” in this tale, there is “What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!”.

It seems to me that both tales are about journeys into the dark side – the nocturnal forest – to look for an esoteric mystical experience that would supply what is missing. But unlike the “There’s no place like home” heartening ending of the OZ tale, we find in the second tale that those who covenant to journey into the forest and the deepest darkest part of it, come home disillusioned and faithless.

Often, especially in our youth, we begin to question the religious beliefs and worldviews of our families, of our mentors and of those around us. We see hypocrisy around us and despise it and yet become two-faced in our own sought out experiences wrought in the dark. We then begin to take on ambivalence about evil, giving ourselves the ‘grace’ to operate in both good and evil ways. Moral relativism is that form of grace.

We tell ourselves that there are people who are restrictive, conservative and Puritanical – “They don’t know me.”. We tell ourselves that we have become too worldly-wise to be like them: “I have Jesus. I’m above all that narrow-minded out-of-date conventionalism. I’m the progressive sort.” So, we journey into the dark forest, into the deepest darkest part of the forest, and think ourselves to be impervious to whatever lurks there. With each step we tell ourselves “I am only seeking understanding”.

We give ourselves permission to investigate the dark side. We say to ourselves “I will do it just one time. Why be left out?  Why not join the “communion of our race””? Thus, we journey into the night and encounter evil. And like Goodman Brown, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1835 short story by the same name, we come home disillusioned, our faith destroyed.

Young Goodman Brown sets out one night to gain existential insight into good and evil. The story, set in 17th century Puritan New England, operates within the Puritan context of sin, grace and unconditional salvific election. I consider the tale an allegory, as it employs symbols starting with the names Goodman and Faith.

In the tale before us, Goodman Brown leaves his saintly wife Faith at the threshold of their home. She is wearing a pink ribbon on her cap. The pink ribbon, mentioned throughout, I read as a symbol of the admixture of purity (white) and sin (red). The color speaks to Goodman Brown’s spiritual understanding based on his Puritan beliefs and also to his rose-colored romance-based naiveté about the nature of evil.

“Poor little Faith!” thought he, for his heart smote him. “What a wretch am I to leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought as she spoke there was trouble in her face, as if a dream had warned her what work is to be done tonight. But no, no; ‘t would kill her to think it. Well, she’s a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven.”

With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.

As Goodman sets out, he does so under the cover of night and the cover of assumption: as a Puritan, Goodman Brown considers himself one of the elect. He carries with him a Puritan/Calvinist ‘good hands’ insurance card – the doctrine of predestination. He doesn’t leave home without it. And, as you read above, Goodman assumes that his association with the right people – his wife Faith in particular and the town’s good church folk in general – that he will follow them to the heavenly home. Goodman Brown goes out into the portentous night feeling safe and secure from all alarms. But his predetermined confidence quickly melts away as soon as he steps into the mysterious dark woods.

He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.

Goodman’s first encounter in the woods is an old man who reminds him of his goodly grandfather. The old man appears to be waiting for Goodman. He says, “You are late, Goodman Brown.” Goodman replies “Faith kept me back awhile”.

Though the old man appears similar to Brown in many pedestrian ways the old man also appears to have “an indescribable air of one who knew the world”. And there’s something else Goodman notices and tries to explain away.

But the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as remarkable was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light.

It is clear to the reader that the old man is the devil who is supported by the serpent staff, He does his best to entice Goodman Brown down the road to what is later called “the communion of your race” where he will learn of the “secret deeds” of his fellow townsfolk and see hypocrisy countenanced.

Goodman balks, claiming to be one of a breed of men who is above the riff-raff.

“Too far! too far!” exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming his walk. “My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest men and good Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of the name of Brown that ever took this path and kept—”

Goodman’s journey away from faith is stop and go as wrestles with the temptation of going on. He encounters something he initially resists and uses the honor of his good name and of those before him as a reason to rethink things before giving on to going on. But, he doesn’t use his faith as a shield and so bends in to temptation. He continues his journey with the old man’s urging.

The old man tries to persuade Goodman to get up and continue. He does so by using Goodman’s own argument. The old man conjures up a kinship with men like Goodman. He lies about having personal knowledge and acquaintance of Goodman’s family. He then speaks of townsfolk – deacons and those in power – as personal references. He cajoles Goodman to continue their ‘association’ by journeying on.

Goodman Brown once considered himself impervious to all the devil’s wiles. After all he was one of the elect and associated with the right people. But each step he took in the wrong direction away from faith weakened his resolve. His compromises were reinforced by his inordinate curiosity. He continues his journey into the deepest darkest part of the forest and sees what the “communion of our race” so desires, “that the good shrank not from the wicked, nor were sinners abashed”.

There are several interpretations and critiques of the story. Some will say that Hawthorne is pointing out the hypocrisy of a society that prides itself on its high moral and civic standing and makes outcasts of those who do not live up to its standards. Other interpreters go out on a dark forest limb with their construal:

Modern critics have interpreted “Young Goodman Brown” in many ways. The story as a critique of society stands out to some. To psychologically inclined readers, Brown journeys into the psyche. The village represents the superego, whereas the forest and darkness become equivalents of the Freudian id. The entire story becomes a portrait of one human mind that discovers the usually suppressed and disquieting reality of animal instinct

The story’s symbols lend its meaning to a wide audience and to many interpretations. As you read it you will have your own takeaway. I consider it an allegory or parable about assumptions, hypocrisy and the lure of evil to pull one away from one’s home base of faith toward the “reality of animal instincts”.

The story doesn’t tell us Brown’s motives other than “present evil purpose” Conjecture would lead us to think that young Goodman Brown had become questioning about evil and the devil even though he lived surrounded by strict warnings against both in Puritan village. One gets the sense that Brown goes out by himself to just stick his nose in on evil for the sake of understanding the world he lives in and perhaps the fear of evil inculcated in him by his upbringing.

I have provided some of my take on Young Goodman Brown and some excerpts from the story with the hope that you will read the short story (it should take about fifteen minutes). I invite you to consider what road you are taking when you want to stick your nose in on evil. Consider where it leads and what you will encounter. And, where it will lead you. This road does not lead home.

We are told in Scripture to “test the spirits” so that we may know what is good and true and from God. That is not what is going on in Young Goodman Brown. Rather, this a young man who leaves faith behind and takes a walk on the wild side and ends up at a satanic ritual. His road did not lead back home to faith. It led to nihilism and despair and the resolve to no longer exist.

In truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing more frightful than the figure of Goodman Brown. On he flew among the black pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied gestures, now giving vent to an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting forth such laughter as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like demons around him. The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac on his course, until…

Well, you’ll just have to read the story:

young_goodman_brownDownload

Filed under Christianity, Culture, Evil, gnosticism, Halloween, Literature Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

The Takeover of 2020

January 1, 2021 Leave a comment

We can all agree that 2020 was disorienting, dispiriting and depleting. We are reeling from the noxious effects of evil unleased in the midst of a great battle:

“There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God, and counter claimed by Satan.” C.S. Lewis

2020 started on anything but a neutral ground.  The enemy of our souls, allied with powerful cultural forces – corporate media, ivory tower professors, big-tech oligarchs, and social media publishers – had taken over the cultural terrain. To hold their ground, you and I have been hit with a constant torrent of subversive propaganda to weaken our defenses. The messaging seeks to disorient, dispirit and deplete those who oppose them. It negates and zeroes out everything that is good in terms of a Creator and resets truth to be what power declares it to be. Here is a short list of the anti-human messaging:

  • The world has no Creator. You are not to be considered a creature of a good personal God. You are to be considered a chance by-product of a natural process randomly occurring out of chaos. The human world is a human construct.
  • Your life motivation, like all else in the “red in tooth and claw” universe, is the will to power.
  • Truth is what friends (and voters, viewers, etc.) let me get away with saying.
  • Science is not about finding the truth. There is no truth (we are told). Science is about the means for the will to power.
  • Christianity is at the root of all the problems facing mankind. Since we are creatures of earth, we must turn to the earth for our salvation. Ideology is to replace religion.
  • Language and what you say must be controlled because you must not get away with saying anything that smacks of truth.
  • The repudiation of reason, history, tradition, and metanarrative – rejection of anything that gives society understanding, meaning and hope as to how and why and that stands apart from ideology – allows one to rise above the aforementioned, claim the power of deconstruction and look down and mock.
  • The way forward is through self-consciousness, moral relativism, pluralism and Globalism.

Onto a minefield plotted by nihilists desiring to blast God-given life out of you, communist agitators -BLM protestors – flew in. It is clear from the Black Futures Lab donation page that the protests were sponsored by the Chinese Progressive Association (an agency of the Chinese Communist Party or CCP) among other anti-American sources.  COVID-19 – a bioweapon created and released by the Chinese Communist Party, also flew in.

Seeing a chance to claim a massive stretch of ground under the cover of crisis, western tech globalists and the Pope used the virus and their will to power. With their influence, money and authority (and the subservient corporate media) they sold “lockdowns”, a CCP containment model, as the means to achieve the Great Reset. The Great Reset is a complete restructuring of social and economic life on earth using as its model the CCP communist state.

The CCP uses biometric-technocratic surveillance of its people to keep them in line. You and I are under are to come under the same surveillance. You and I are to be made non-human obedient automatons of the Great Reset communist super-state. To enable this, the outcome of the 2020 election was manipulated.

According to Andrea Widburg “Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg may have played one of the biggest roles in swinging the election outcome.” Putting the CCP-compromised Joe Biden and the pliable Kamala Harris into office by any means necessary -election fraud in swing states – facilitates the globalist agenda.

Totalitarian globalists have taken over 2020. In doing so, they have shown that they hate populists. They have shown their hatred via the corporate media and by the evidenced election fraud. Globalists want to disorient, dispirit and deplete populist America.

To wit, Amazon, Walmart and other globalist big box stores had surging profits in 2020 while small businesses across the nation were being eviscerated not by COVID-19 but by the globalist-imposed lockdowns.

Globalists hate you and me. Globalists love non-thinkers and TV watchers. These nihilists will tell you that there is nothing to understand so why think at all?  Having power is all that matters. Those Gollums love those who have emptied themselves of resistance and follow them to Shelob’s lair.

 2020. Disorienting. Dispiriting. Depleting. On purpose. You and I are reeling from the noxious effects of evil unleased in the midst of a great battle.

Disoriented? One of the aspects of encountering evil is not being able to think straight. Confusion brought on by the repetition of lies, contradictory statements, and the layering of self-deception coupled with moral relativism produces stupor – an inability to think or act. (Shelob’s venom was not intended to kill its victims but only to render them unconscious and keep their meat fresh.) Corporate media sponsored by Globalists is the main source of confusion (and venom) today.

Dispirited? Evil is in opposition to life. Evil is not empathetic. Evil protects itself, its image. Hence, evil is opposed to free speech and to religion. Evil is opposed to redemption. Hence, the removal of meaning through deconstructionism and the cancel culture. Evil pursues a world of Absence and Nothingness.

Depleted? Evil is not simply the absence of goodness — it is actively hateful and destructive. The will to power is behind the bioweapon unleashed in the world and the election fraud unleashed in America.

The following sums up the what you and I have been exposed to:

M. Scott Peck, Psychiatrist and author of People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil defines evil as “the exercise of political power — that is, the imposition of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion — in order to avoid extending one’s self for the purpose of nurturing spiritual growth. Ordinary laziness is nonlove; evil is antilove.”

It has been said in clinical settings that naming something, in this case evil, gives us a certain amount of power over it. This power is not the will to power in order to control others, as the world defines. Rather, it is the power to not be overcome by evil and to resist evil in ourselves and to conquer evil with good …on the 2021 battlefield.

Filed under 2020 current events, Current Events 2020, pandemic, Political Commentary, Politics, social commentary Tagged with , , , , , , ,

You’ll Never Be the Same

January 19, 2020 Leave a comment

 

Daybreak. The village of Bethsaida. The air is hot and dry and still. And something is astir. Jesus has come to the “house of fishing”.

You hurry down to the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Your husband and his brother have been fishing long before daybreak. You carry with you a clay jar full of water and a cloth.

Along the shore are baskets of fish. The village women and merchants have come to purchase the salted tilapia. You know that your husband will reserve some for his family and for the widows. And though there over two hundred boats on the water, you spot your husband’s and his brother’s boat.

At the edge of the water you hear “The time is fulfilled! God’s Kingdom is arriving! Turn back and believe the good news!” Jesus, walking along the shore, is coming toward you.

Trying to get your husband’s attention, you wave. He and his brother are busy casting nets. You shout. “Look! Jesus is coming this way!” Your husband finally hears your voice and turns toward you.

Jesus walks up to you. From the same vantage point he calls out to your husband and his brother, “Follow me! I’ll have you fishing for people!”

At once, your husband and his brother let go of their nets and bring the boat to shore. At once, they begin to follow Jesus along the shoreline. You follow them, two steps to their one, with the clay jar of water. You soak the cloth in the water. With it your husband proceeds to wipe his brow and then his beard to remove the crusted salt – sweat from his brow. You hand him the clay jar. Dehydrated, he gulps half the water down and then hands the jar to his brother.

Further down Jesus calls “Follow me!” to two men mending their nets. You know them – James and John, the sons of Zebedee. The brothers leave their boat and their father and the hired servants behind.

At this point, you’ve run out of breath and are not able to keep up. You call to your husband, “I’m going home. My mother is not feeling well.” Your husband acknowledges but goes on, determined to keep his eyes on Jesus.

As you watch him and the fellowship of fishermen continue down the shore, you remember the words of the prophet Isaiah that were read in the synagogue last Shabbat:

The Lord God helps me;
therefore I have not been disgraced;
therefore I have set my face like flint,
and I know that I shall not be put to shame

Zebedee calls to you. “I will have my hired hands take care of your boat. I will sell the fish you husband caught and bring you fish for you and the widows.” You thank him. Carrying the clay jar and the cloth you head home pondering all that has happened. Every woman in Bethsaida knew what Mary had said about Jesus. Something begins to stir in your heart.

An hour or so later your husband and his brother are at the door. They tell you that they are going to Capernaum with Jesus and are not sure when they will return. You give them some bread to take with. Before your husband takes off, you stop him at the door. “Could he be the one? He’s talking about a kingdom. I don’t want you getting killed. What’s his plan?”

Your husband responds. “Woman, there is only one way to find out.”

Sweat runs down his temples to his beard. The midday sun is blazing. You hand him his mantle, which he throws over his shoulder. He races off with his brother Andrew. He calls to John and James who are already fifty paces ahead of them and Jesus is ten paces ahead of them. He wants them to wait up. Your husband is a big man with a big heart and is impulsive to a fault. He takes strides in all directions. And today, you wonder what will become of him and the fishing business as he takes off in a new direction.

On your way home you stop and give the widows the salted fish and to hear rumors. You learn that many were repenting and were being baptized in the River Jordan by John the Baptist, Jesus among them. And that when he came out of the water there was a dove and a large booming voice that said “You are my son! You are the one I love! You make me very glad!” There is so much more for you to ponder.

At home you prepare for Shabbat which begins just before nightfall. You sweep and clean your home from top to bottom. You cover the sales money so it is out of sight. You make sure there is oil in the two lamps.

The night settles in. You eat food prepared earlier. You care for your mother who now has a fever. As you wipe her head with a damp cloth you talk with her about Jesus until you can’t stop yawning. You go to your bed. You are glad that you and your husband sleep in separate rooms, for when your husband sleeps, he snores – a nightly ritual even on Shabbat. Tonight, there will be the moaning of your delirious mother.

As you fall asleep you imagine your husband walking to Capernaum. He would walk two hours in the hot sun. Did he have water? Maybe the journey would take less time with the strides Jesus takes. When will he return …?

 

Your husband and his brother and James and John return the next day. They are all at the door with Jesus. He had been told about your mother and her illness. Jesus goes in, takes your mother by the hand, and raises her up. At once, her fever is gone and she was well enough to feed them. How is this possible, you ask yourself? But there is no time to wonder as you want to feed them all. Your heart is brimming with thanksgiving.

Outside your home there is large crowd – people from all over Galilee have followed Jesus. Jesus goes out to them. People with all kinds of diseases are brought to him and he heals them. Inside, the four fishermen sit down on the floor. You place bread and fish and water before them. As you do you ask them for details of what happened in Capernaum. They all begin to talk at the same time, but your husband has the loudest voice and so the rest wait their turn:

“We went into the synagogue and Jesus began teaching from the scrolls….’

“None of us had heard anything like this teaching before. He has his own authority, “John interjected. The other three agreed. Your husband continues.

“We are sitting there looking at each other astonished by what he is saying. You see that crowd out there. There was a large crowd around the synagogue. The people were pressing in from all sides trying to hear him. Anyway, we are sitting there when all of a sudden this guy starts shrieking “What business have you got with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: you’re God’s Holy One!”

“He had an unclean spirit living in him,” James tells you. As he says this they hear another shriek outside. And another. Andrew got up to see what was happening. “Jesus is casting out those spirits right outside our door!” Your husband continues.

“You know what he said to that unclean spirit in the synagogue?” Wide-eyed, you ask, “What?”

“He says, ‘Be quiet! And come out of him! The man jerked and writhed like a snake and then screamed and then the unclean spirit came right out of him!”

“We were all shocked, “John continued. “Jesus not only speaks with authority, he even tells unclean spirits what to do, and they do it! The demons talk like they know who he is. He tells them to shut up.”

“We know who the unclean spirits are, where they come from,” Andrew added. “They are from Belial, the kingdom of Belial.”

Noticing two centurions keeping an eye on the crowd, your husband asks, “Do you think that the coming kingdom Jesus talks about will rid us of the tyranny of the Roman dogs?

James is quick to respond, “I hope so. Right now, he appears to be overthrowing the kingdom of Belial.”

“I’m good with that!” John chimes in. “Look around. Those spirits wreak havoc on everyone and everything. The Essenes at Qumran have been battling them for years.”

Nodding in the direction of the two centurions, James wondered out loud, “If Jesus has power over the kingdom of Belial, shouldn’t the Romans be shaking in their caligae?”

Your mother, upon hearing this, went out and offered the two centurions water from the clay jar, which they guardedly accepted. She then offered Jesus some and invited him in for a meal and a place to sleep for the night. He accepted.

Very early – the middle of the night, actually – Jesus got up and went out. You woke your husband and he roused Andrew and James and John. They went looking for Jesus. When they found him praying, they said, “Everyone is looking for you!”

“Let’s go off to the other towns around here,” Jesus replied, “so that I can tell the news to people there too. That’s why I came out.”

 

The next morning you hurry down to the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Men have been fishing long before daybreak. You carry with you a clay jar full of water and a cloth. You want to do what you can to prepare the way of the Lord.

 

 

 

Adapted from Mark Chapter 1

Filed under Christianity, Evil, The demonic, The Gospel of Mark, The Kingdom of God Tagged with , , , ,

Not All Roads Lead Home

March 10, 2019 Leave a comment

 

In truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing more frightful than the figure of Goodman Brown.

Before the Technicolor fairy tale of a quartet of troubled characters trekking through a foreboding forest hoping to gain what they lack from the “great and powerful” Self-Gnosis (The Wizard of OZ), there is a tale of a young man taking a similar journey. And though there is no fear of “lions and tigers and bears” in this tale, there is “What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!”.

It seems to me that both tales are about journeys into the dark side – the nocturnal forest – to look for an esoteric mystical experience that would supply what is missing. But unlike the “There’s no place like home” heartening ending of the OZ tale, we find in the second tale that those who covenant to journey into the forest and the deepest darkest part of it, come home disillusioned and faithless.

Often, especially in our youth, we begin to question the religious beliefs and worldviews of our families, of our mentors and of those around us. We see hypocrisy around us and despise it and yet become two-faced in our own sought out experiences wrought in the dark. We then begin to take on ambivalence about evil, giving ourselves the ‘grace’ to operate in both good and evil ways. Moral relativism is that form of grace.

We tell ourselves that there are people who are restrictive, conservative and Puritanical – “They don’t know me.”. We tell ourselves that we have become too worldly-wise to be like them: “I have Jesus. I’m above all that narrow-minded out-of-date conventionalism. I’m the progressive sort.” So, we journey into the dark forest, into the deepest darkest part of the forest, and think ourselves to be impervious to whatever lurks there. With each step we tell ourselves “I am only seeking understanding”.

We give ourselves permission to investigate the dark side. We say to ourselves “I will do it just one time. Why be left out?  Why not join the “communion of our race””? Thus, we journey into the night and encounter evil. And like Goodman Brown, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1835 short story by the same name, we come home disillusioned, our faith destroyed.

Young Goodman Brown sets out one night to gain existential insight into good and evil. The story, set in 17th century Puritan New England, operates within the Puritan context of sin, grace and unconditional salvific election. I consider the tale an allegory, as it employs symbols starting with the names Goodman and Faith.

In the tale before us, Goodman Brown leaves his saintly wife Faith at the threshold of their home. She is wearing a pink ribbon on her cap. The pink ribbon, mentioned throughout, I read as a symbol of the admixture of purity (white) and sin (red). The color speaks to Goodman Brown’s spiritual understanding based on his Puritan beliefs and also to his rose-colored romance-based naiveté about the nature of evil.

“Poor little Faith!” thought he, for his heart smote him. “What a wretch am I to leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought as she spoke there was trouble in her face, as if a dream had warned her what work is to be done tonight. But no, no; ‘t would kill her to think it. Well, she’s a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven.”

With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.

As Goodman sets out, he does so under the cover of night and the cover of assumption: as a Puritan, Goodman Brown considers himself one of the elect. He carries with him a Puritan/Calvinist ‘good hands’ insurance card – the doctrine of predestination. He doesn’t leave home without it. And, as you read above, Goodman assumes that his association with the right people – his wife Faith in particular and the town’s good church folk in general – that he will follow them to the heavenly home. Goodman Brown goes out into the portentous night feeling safe and secure from all alarms. But his predetermined confidence quickly melts away as soon as he steps into the mysterious dark woods.

He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.

Goodman’s first encounter in the woods is an old man who reminds him of his goodly grandfather. The old man appears to be waiting for Goodman. He says, “You are late, Goodman Brown.” Goodman replies “Faith kept me back awhile”.

Though the old man appears similar to Brown in many pedestrian ways the old man also appears to have “an indescribable air of one who knew the world”. And there’s something else Goodman notices and tries to explain away.

But the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as remarkable was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light.

It is clear to the reader that the old man is the devil who is supported by the serpent staff, He does his best to entice Goodman Brown down the road to what is later called “the communion of your race” where he will learn of the “secret deeds” of his fellow townsfolk and see hypocrisy countenanced.

Goodman balks, claiming to be one of a breed of men who is above the riff-raff.

“Too far! too far!” exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming his walk. “My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest men and good Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of the name of Brown that ever took this path and kept—”

Goodman’s journey away from faith is stop and go as wrestles with the temptation of going on. He encounters something he initially resists and uses the honor of his good name and of those before him as a reason to rethink things before giving on to going on. But, he doesn’t use his faith as a shield and so bends in to temptation. He continues his journey with the old man’s urging.

The old man tries to persuade Goodman to get up and continue. He does so by using Goodman’s own argument. The old man conjures up a kinship with men like Goodman. He lies about having personal knowledge and acquaintance of Goodman’s family. He then speaks of townsfolk – deacons and those in power – as personal references. He cajoles Goodman to continue their ‘association’ by journeying on.

Goodman Brown once considered himself impervious to all the devil’s wiles. After all he was one of the elect and associated with the right people. But each step he took in the wrong direction away from faith weakened his resolve. His compromises were reinforced by his inordinate curiosity. He continues his journey into the deepest darkest part of the forest and sees what the “communion of our race” so desires, “that the good shrank not from the wicked, nor were sinners abashed”.

 

There are several interpretations and critiques of the story. Some will say that Hawthorne is pointing out the hypocrisy of a society that prides itself on its high moral and civic standing and makes outcasts of those who do not live up to its standards. Other interpreters go out on a dark forest limb with their construal:

Modern critics have interpreted “Young Goodman Brown” in many ways. The story as a critique of society stands out to some. To psychologically inclined readers, Brown journeys into the psyche. The village represents the superego, whereas the forest and darkness become equivalents of the Freudian id. The entire story becomes a portrait of one human mind that discovers the usually suppressed and disquieting reality of animal instinct

The story’s symbols lend its meaning to a wide audience and to many interpretations. As you read it you will have your own takeaway. I consider it an allegory or parable about assumptions, hypocrisy and the lure of evil to pull one away from one’s home base of faith toward the “reality of animal instincts”.

The story doesn’t tell us Brown’s motives other than “present evil purpose” Conjecture would lead us to think that young Goodman Brown had become questioning about evil and the devil even though he lived surrounded by strict warnings against both in Puritan village. One gets the sense that Brown goes out by himself to just stick his nose in on evil for the sake of understanding the world he lives in and perhaps the fear of evil inculcated in him by his upbringing.

 

I have provided some of my take on Young Goodman Brown and some excerpts from the story with the hope that you will read the short story (it should take about fifteen minutes). I invite you to consider what road you are taking when you want to stick your nose in on evil. Consider where it leads and what you will encounter. And, where it will lead you. This road does not lead home.

We are told in Scripture to “test the spirits” so that we may know what is good and true and from God. That is not what is going on in Young Goodman Brown. Rather, this a young man who leaves faith behind and takes a walk on the wild side and ends up at a satanic ritual. His road did not lead back home to faith. It led to nihilism and despair and the resolve to no longer exist.

In truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing more frightful than the figure of Goodman Brown. On he flew among the black pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied gestures, now giving vent to an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting forth such laughter as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like demons around him. The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac on his course, until…

 

Well, you’ll just have to read the story:

young_goodman_brownDownload

Filed under Christianity, Culture, Evil, gnosticism, Halloween, Literature Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

The Serpent’s Apprentice(s)

February 24, 2019 Leave a comment

The Fall of the Damned, Peter Paul Rubens

Spiritual reality surrounds us. This fact is attested to at the very least by the numerous TV programs about the paranormal. Shown are ‘investigations’ of the dead, and of ghosts and of supposed haunting spirits. But what are those fascinated and even obsessed about the spirit world connecting with? What do we know about the unclean spirits, the ones Jesus cast out of humans (See my previous post Deliver Us from Evil)?

Genesis opens with God and His temple building creation of earth. We learn of light and darkness. And we soon learn of the spiritual forces of darkness that want control of the temple where God is to dwell with man.

Right from the start of man’s existence another voice interprets God’s word for its own purposes: “Did God really say you couldn’t?”; “You will not certainly die if you do eat the fruit.”; “God has held back nothing from you but the fruit of this tree. Eat it and know what He knows.” Humans fall into sin by willfully accepting the Serpent’s interpretation of becoming like God. Adam and Eve took the bait (an apple leading to God-like knowledge) into their hands. The enmity between humans and the serpent begins.

Prior to the fall of man, the Satan had a falling out with God. What happened is explained in detail in Ezekiel 28. A description of ascendant pride, whether of the Satan or of man’s, is recorded in Isaiah 14. The fallout of enmity between God and the red dragon, an emblem of the Satan, is described in Daniel 8 and here, in Revelation 12: 3-4:

Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads.  Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth.

Proverbs 16:18 sums the result of pride and opposition to God: “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall”.

The fallen angels were booted from Heaven and were no longer able to return. Where did the fallen angels go after being kicked out of heaven? Genesis 6: 1-7 tells us indirectly.

When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.

Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.

The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.

So the LORD said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”

 

In Scripture the “sons of God” typically refer to angels. Above are fallen angels. This passage infers that the first incarnation and sacrilege took place – fallen angels impregnated humans.  They had illicit intercourse with women thereby creating a super race of warriors. Then, as now, the fallen angels mean to deface the image of God in humans. They seek to undo what God has created and to ‘create’ a race of Un-men*.

The cast-out angels did what they apprenticed to do by their father, the serpent or the “Bent One” as so described in C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy. They came to down earth to create chaos and to gain the power and favor they lost. As agents of evil they come under the description of evil as provided in N.T. Wright’s book Evil and the Justice of God:

Evil is the force of anti-creation, anti-life, the force which opposes and seeks to deface and destroy God’s good world of space, time and matter, and above all God’s image-bearing human creatures.

As we read above, the fallen angels deface Gods’ image bearing humans in the temple of their bodies. Using human sexuality and man’s willful acceptance they debase that image. Does any of this collusion with evil leading to self-imposed temple defilement look familiar today?

Fallen angels multiplied what happened in the garden of Eden. Mankind’s wickedness grew with the earth’s population. Until the flood. Then, except for Noah and his family and selected animals, the human race was wiped from the face of the earth along with the Nephilim (“giants” in the Septuagint), the offspring of the intercourse of fallen angels with women. It may be assumed that with the decimating flood the hosts of the unclean spirits died and the unclean spirits were released into, for a lack of a better word, the ether.

Intertestamental Jewish writings provide the context of Jesus’ ministry including the existence of unclean spirits. These writing fill in roughly four-hundred years of information about Jewish thought and theology between the Old and New Testament. Topics include angels, demons, the messiah, the resurrection and the law of Moses. Each of these topics, which were on the minds of the Jews, is addressed in the gospels. Jesus responds to each topic, each question, and each confrontation with authority.

Adding to the context of Jesus’ day, synagogues, mentioned in the gospels but not mentioned in the Pentateuch, likely originated in exile and in Babylonia. The opening chapter of Mark’s gospel finds Jesus in a synagogue casting out an unclean spirit.

What about written context beyond Genesis chapter 6? Other than the reference in Genesis, there is nothing written about fallen angels/unclean spirits until the intertestamental books. The topic of demons in these books may have been due to Babylonian interest in lesser gods and demons and their writing about them. Here is a passage from the Book of the Watchers (15: 6-12), written around 300 BCE:

And though ye were holy, spiritual, living the eternal life, you have defiled yourselves with the blood of women, and have begotten (children) with the blood of flesh, and, as the children of men, have lusted after flesh and blood as those also do who die and perish. Therefore have I given them wives also that they might impregnate them, and beget children by them, that thus nothing might be wanting to them on earth. But you were formerly spiritual, living the eternal life, and immortal for all generations of the world. And therefore I have not appointed wives for you; for as for the spiritual ones of the heaven, in heaven is their dwelling.
And now, the giants, who are produced from the spirits and flesh, shall be called evil spirits upon
the earth, and on the earth shall be their dwelling. Evil spirits have proceeded from their bodies; because they are born from men and from the holy Watchers is their beginning and primal origin; they shall be evil spirits on earth, and evil spirits shall they be called. [As for the spirits of heaven, in heaven shall be their dwelling, but as for the spirits of the earth which were born upon the earth, on the earth shall be their dwelling.]
And the spirits of the giants afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle, and work destruction on the earth, and cause trouble: they take no food, but nevertheless hunger and thirst, and cause offences. And these spirits shall rise up against the children of men and against the women, because they have proceeded from them.

The “Watchers” designation tells us that these spirits are restless and never sleep. These disembodied spirits are able to dwell in humans and animals. We learn that they cause havoc: “the spirits of the giants afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle, and work destruction on the earth, and cause trouble”. They are the ones Jesus casts out (again and again) as he begins His kingdom on earth.

 

In a previous post, See Him as He Is, I posited that followers of Jesus must see Jesus as He is as recorded in all of Scripture’s narrative and as revealed to them by the Holy Spirit. They are not to view him through a tainted by evil rose-colored glass worldview. Absolute clarity requires the Lord’s followers to remove their hands from their eyes and their fingers from their ears and to take in the reality of Jesus and the world around us. In my last post I noted that the unclean spirit in Mark chapter one knew exactly who Jesus is. The unclean spirit saw with absolute clarity. And, like Jesus, we are to see enemy as he is and then cast him out.

Now, the Evil One and his apprentices don’t care about your politics. They don’t care if you are Republican or Democrat. They don’t care about the color of your skin or about the colors of your flag. They don’t care if you are rich or poor or male or female. Here is what they care about: to “afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle, and work destruction on the earth, and cause trouble”. The Evil One’s apprentices seek to deface creation and the image of God in each human. Throughout cultures and nations and throughout time, the apprentices entice, lie and pervert humans, turning them into beasts which live to satisfy animal urges.

In C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape (the Evil One), apprentices Wormwood. In the quote below note Screwtape’s frustration with how things were created by God and how that which has been created must be perverted:

”He [God] has a bourgeois mind. He has filled His world full of pleasures. There are things for humans to do all day long without His minding in the least – sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. Everything has to be twisted before it’s any use to us. We fight under cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side.”

 

Don’t let twisted pleasure and appetites define you. Abhor evil. Cling to good. Don’t become an apprentice of the Evil One. Don’t give the enemy advantage. Don’t toy with evil. Stay away from mediums, Tarot cards, Ouija Boards, astrology, séances, pornography, drugs and …entertainment, the devil’s playground.

Disney’s Fantasia is one example of how entertainment downplays the forces of darkness. Consider the animated short wherein Mickey Mouse portrays a sorcerer’s apprentice. The popular cartoon character plays with magic and conjures up all kinds of out-of-control havoc. The ‘approving’ adult background music is Paul Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Watching this, a child is lured into relating to and empathizing with evil’s apprentice, an endearing cutesy child-like character in a wizard hat who experiments with magic and gets into ‘innocent’ trouble. On the surface, the animated short comes across as cautionary tale against disobeying the rules. But it actually encourages a child to try again and to avoid the consequences next time.

The twaddle of Harry Potter books and movies is meant to entertain and to make a huge profit for its creator and producers. Yet, the fantasy series has nothing good to offer the partaker. The series is just diversion, a distraction from reality. And worse. Like Disney’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice, its main characters engage with magic arts. Entertainment, like all temptations including the ones posed to the Lord, are, in essence, about denying reality and obtaining power to control reality. Once your child partakes of this ‘amusement’, he or she is hooked. See your enemy as he is. He wants your child to experiment with evil to obtain power. If you think I am kidding, look around at the pagan invasion of children’s culture. (A book I highly recommend: A Landscape with Dragons: The Battle for Your Child’s Mind by Michael O’Brien)

Unclean spirits promote fantasy. Their temptations come in the form of fantasy. Just as in the Garden they want you to entertain notions of unrestricted freedom and narcissistic god-like power (e.g., R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly”). The temptation to convert fantasy into reality – more money and notoriety – is behind the Jussie Smollett hoax. There is a vast difference between a healthy imagination in which good and evil and outcomes are considered and fantasy which projects into reality.

“… we need to make a distinction between fantasy and imagination. Both fantasy and imagination concern unrealities; but while the unrealities of fantasy penetrate and pollute the world, those of the imagination exist in a world of their own, in which we wander freely and in full knowledge of the really real…Fantasy covets the gross, the explicit, the no-holds-barred display of the unobtainable; and in the crisis of display the unobtainable is vicariously obtained.”

-Roger Scruton, Chapter 6, Fantasy, Imagination and the Salesman, An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Culture

Spiritual reality surrounds us. This fact is substantially attested to by the influences of the perverse paranormal on humans. Look around at the effects of unclean spirits on humans. You find cynicism and sentimentality promoted. You find projection and scapegoating. You find a culture embracing victimhood instead of personal responsibility. You find unexplained mental illness and depression. You read reports of suicide. Evil, promoted day and night, afflicts, oppresses, and destroys the good.

Turn on the radio and you will hear music from the bowels of hell. Art and architecture are increasingly de-humanized. As you sit in front of any media outlet you come across daily headlines and a continuous stream of entertainment filled with accounts of murder, violence, sex abuse, revenge, racism, and all manner of evil. The dark web is a “malignant outgrowth of evil – a sub-culture collective of hive-minded individuals wreaking havoc today, even now as you read your computer screen”. The spirit of lawlessness surrounds us and encounters us everywhere we are, even in our beds.

This world, until Jesus returns to reign on earth, is under attack by the agents, apprentices, and accusers of the Evil One. These spiritual entities will do all they can with your permission to diminish the glory of God in the temples where the image of God dwells. And, just as unclean spirits impregnated women, these same unclean spirits want to impregnate and defile your temple – your body, mind and spirit – with inordinate desires with and for the proliferation of pornography obsession, homosexuality, promiscuity, pedophilia and all manner of sexual perversion.

We are told in Scripture to test the spirits. Test the spirits in your church. If you are hearing spiritual platitudes or prosperity gospel or that “God made you that way” or social justice and rights and political power promotions but you are not hearing evil being addressed and cast out and “Jesus is Lord” every Sunday then there is something very, very wrong. The apprentices have done their work by creating the “Holy Church of Christ Without Christ” (Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor) with the blessing of those in the pews.

Just as in the coliseum of Rome, Christians today are surrounded by roaring lions that seek to devour us. Some of us will be martyred. Others will deny or ignore or even try to placate the lions with compromise and then be consumed by them when a comprise is reached. Some will deny the Lord. Others of us will stand our ground and use the word of God to fell them.

Stay in control of yourselves; stay awake. Your enemy, the devil, is stalking around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, staying resolute in your faith, and knowing that other family members in the rest of the world are facing identical sufferings. Then, after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who called you in the Messiah Jesus to the glory of his new age, will himself put you in good order, and will establish and strengthen you and set you on firm foundations. To him be the power forever. Amen. 1 Peter 5: 8-11

What are those fascinated with and even obsessed about the spirt world connecting with? They are connecting with the unclean spirits that left the bodies of giants during the Flood and the spirits that left the bodies of pigs when they rushed into the water and all of the unclean demonic host cast out of heaven and unable to return. We must heed the Apostle Paul. Paul saw the enemy as he is. So, he warned the church at Ephesus, a church surrounded by sex cults and idolatry and inundated with unclean spirits, (Eph. 6:12):

The warfare we’re engaged in, you see, isn’t against flesh and blood. It’s against the leaders, against the authorities, against the powers that rule the world in this dark age, against the wicked spiritual elements in the heavenly places.

See your enemy as he is. Your enemy sees you as you are – the image-bearing creation of the One who cast them out of His Presence.

 

And though this world, with devils filled,
should threaten to undo us,
we will not fear, for God hath willed
his truth to triumph through us.
The Prince of Darkness grim,
we tremble not for him;
his rage we can endure,
for lo, his doom is sure;
one little word shall fell him.

–        “A Mighty Fortress is our God” by Martin Luther

 

 

Lord, the whole of your creation, including me, groans waiting for your return to put things right, to finally cast out the red dragon and his apprentices, the unclean spirits. Help me as I wait to see the enemy as It is and to cast It out. Give me discernment from your Holy Spirit to be able to test the spirits in your church. If You are not declared Lord in the church we attend then help us, by your Spirit, to test the spirits of that church and to put things right.

Help me to overcome my resistance to being different than the Dark World. I am born of you, the Light of the world. That is why I find no pleasure in the media or the politics of power. I want to dwell in your Light all of my days and in the age to come.

Father, your beloved and begotten son Jesus is Lord of the Universe. Amen.

 

~~~

Lord willing, I’ll have a future post about dealing with evil.

(*) In C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy novel Perelandra, Ransom the protagonist names Weston, the evil antagonist, the Un-man. Weston becomes less human and more evil as the story progresses.

Filed under Christianity, Culture, Evil Tagged with , , , ,

Deliver Us from Evil

February 10, 2019 Leave a comment

Evil and its enforcer, power, has been around long before man employed both to consolidate empires. Cain killed Abel to gain power over the living reminder of his own disobedience. Joseph’s brothers sold Joseph into slavery to gain power over the living reminder of their supposed unfair treatment and over their father’s love and estate. Evil and its enforcer, power, have always worked together with ruthless abandon to take truth hostage.

 “Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence.”

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

An astute student of world history would discern that seeking and holding absolute power is valued as far superior to seeking and holding absolute truth. Those who hold power believe they can generate a ‘regime of truth’ by virtue of their position: “truth is what I say it is.”. Anyone attuned to current world affairs can readily see that culture and politics, including our democratic Republic in the U.S., revolve around who holds what power and therefore controls what is and what has been. For, as Winston repeated over and over in George Orwell’s 1984, “who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” A student of Scripture will see that the regimes of power and truth, beastly kingdoms, are made subject to Absolute Power and Absolute Truth.

It has been said that the gospel crafted by Mark, an ace narrator, was written to a Roman audience. Certainly, there is a “just then” immediacy to his gospel. A sense of action is invoked which would peek a centurion’s ‘man of action’ curiosity. Of more importance to a Roman though, and to any earthly authority and to those under authority, is the theme of who holds power. On earth, regimes of power control regimes of truth. The spiritual world of unclean spirits requires a human habitation to control truth incarnate (Rom. 1:21). Mark’s gospel is the proclamation of a new regime of power and has nothing to do with a justice league of super-heroes with super powers.

In terms similar to announcing a new emperor who claimed to be a son of god, Mark begins his gospel by proclaiming Jesus’ title:

“This is where the good news starts – the good news of Jesus the Messiah, God’s son.”

With this proclamation a new regime is declared. The title acknowledges Jesus’ authority and connotes his power. The title announces what Israel had so hoped for — a Messiah, one who is anointed by God and therefore God’s representative. The Hebrew scriptures chronicled anointed kings, priests and prophets who represented God to Israel. The book of Daniel and writings between the Testaments, in particular the Messianic Apocalypse and the Son of God text from the Dead Sea Scrolls, record Jewish Messianic beliefs in ancient Judaism. In these texts, “Son of Man” is the title given to the one who will reign and hold dominion over all things and offer blessings to those under him.

The new regime, anticipated in Psalm 146 and the Messianic Apocalypse, comes with four blessings:

-The hungry are fed

-the prisoner is set free

-the blind receive their sight

– all things are put right.

Mark’s opening statement declares Jesus to be the anointed One of God. And, of vast more import to the Jews and to the regimes of power and truth, Jesus is declared to be not just another mere mortal claiming to be a son of god, but the One God’s own Son. Human and spirit and citizen and centurion encounter Jesus in Mark’s account. They soon come to this realization.

In the first paragraphs of Mark, Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist is recorded. Here is the anointing of Jesus by water, by the spirit and by The Voice from the realm of heaven: “You are my son! You are the one I love! You make me very glad!”

Next, Jesus is tested by the Satan. The temptation is for Jesus to accept the realm of power and authority that the Satan offers to him.

A few paragraphs later we read of Jesus and his new disciples going to Capernaum. There Jesus encounters a force from the realm of darkness, the same realm offered to him by the Satan:

They went to Capernaum. At once, on the sabbath, Jesus went into the synagogue and taught. They were astonished at his teaching. He wasn’t like the legal teachers; he said things on his own authority.

All at once, in the synagogue, there was a man with an unclean spirit.

“What business have you got with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” he yelled. “Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: you’re God’s Holy One!”

“Be quiet!” ordered Jesus “And come out of him!”

The unclean spirt convulsed the man, gave a great shout, and came out of him. Everyone was astonished.

“What’s this?” they started to say to each other. “New teaching – with real authority! He even tells unclean spirits what to do, and they do it!”

Mark’s gospel account goes on to detail events which show the authority and power of Jesus. Over and over we read of Jesus’ power over demons, the unclean spirits which roam the earth seeking whom they may inhabit. Realms of power are juxtaposed – heaven’s and the dark forces of the Satan which control men. They are shown in direct conflict. And note above: the unclean spirt knows who Jesus is and by whose authority he works before anyone else in the story. But why does Jesus stop the demon from declaring his identity? Mark’s beginning narrative imposes a tension that is resolved at the end of his gospel.

Before the end of the gospel we read of exorcisms. The realms of darkness are dealt with in these passages:

Mark 1:21-28 – shown above

Mark 5:1-20 – a wild untamed man with inhuman strength is possessed by an unclean spirit. He lives in a graveyard. We read that “No one had the strength to tame him”. This demon possessed man sees Jesus and throws himself in front of Jesus and shouts at the top of his voice…

“Why you and me, Jesus?”  “Why you and me, son of the High God?” By God stop torturing me!”  this last, because Jesus was saying to him “Unclean spirit, come out of him!”

Jesus cast The Legion of demons into a herd of pigs. The pigs then rush to the sea where they drowned. (The unclean spirits leave the dead pigs and go on searching for someone to inhabit.)

Mark 7:24-30 – a Greek woman throws herself at Jesus’ feet. She pleads with Jesus to cast an unclean spirit out of her daughter. After hearing the gentile woman’s “even the dogs under the table eat the crumbs that the children drop” Jesus affirms her words and sends her on her way. Her demon-possessed daughter back at home was rid of the unclean spirit.

Mark 9:14-29 – a father brings his demon possessed son to Jesus. The disciples could not cast out the demon. Jesus is notably angry at the unbelief in the power of God, especially when the father hedges, “…if you can do anything…” Jesus reprimands the father. “What do you mean, ‘If you can?” “Everything is possible to someone who believes.” The father shouts “I do believe! “Help me in my unbelief!” Jesus commands the unclean spirit to come out of the boy. The boy convulses and the unclean spirit comes out. The disciples go to question why they were ineffective. Jesus responds, “This sort can only be cast out by prayer.”

In Mark 3:15, 6:7 & 13 and 9:38-39 Jesus gives his followers the authority to cast out unclean spirits.

Mark is an excellent story-teller. As you read above, tension was imposed by Mark in the beginning paragraphs – the silence imposed on the unclean spirit who disclosed Jesus’ identity. This was done to pique the reader’s curiosity. Mark wanted the reader to discover for themselves who Jesus is. Like those involved with Jesus, the reader would question “Is Jesus really the Messiah?” and “Is Jesus really God’s son?” Each encounter and event would provoke questioning and amazement in the reader: “What’s this?”; “New teaching – with real authority! “He even tells unclean spirits what to do, and they do it!” And then the crucifixion appears to give the regime in power – the Romans- the final word about Jesus. But Mark gives us the final word through the mouth of a centurion:

When the centurion who was standing facing him saw that he died in this way, he said, “This fellow really was God’s son.”

The tension is resolved by an onlooker.

 

Lest anyone think that Jesus’ sole purpose on earth was to promote social justice and to have his words later passed on as “all you need is love” sixties-style bromides, Mark’s gospel declares to us that Jesus came to deal with evil and its enforcer, power, and with the agents of corruption possessing a will.

Mark declares that there is a new Lord in power, one with all authority in heaven and on earth. As shown by Mark, no power-enforced “regime of truth” on earth or under the earth can take Jesus’ truth hostage. Truth is what Jesus says it is and his truth can set a person free from power-and will-enforced bondage. No regime of power on earth or under the earth can keep his creation hostage. The world of men is to be set free and blessed by his reign. He chose his followers to make that happen.

Jesus has conferred his authority and power to his followers so that the blind will receive their sight and the hungry are fed and the prisoners are set free and unclean spirits are cast out. The world is to be put right under his Lordship.

To sum Mark’s gospel into today’s media parlance, Jesus slammed, crushed and owned the enemy of our souls. To sum Mark’s gospel in Scriptural phrasing…

The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our LORD and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever. -The Revelation of Jesus Christ 11:15

Filed under Culture, Evil, The Gospel of Mark Tagged with , , , , ,

Somewhere Over and Under the Rainbow

February 3, 2019 Leave a comment

The Evil One and his minions never rest. Unclean spirits roam the earth looking for someone to inhabit. We are told in Scripture (1 Peter 5:8) that the enemy of our souls, Satan, walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he will devour. He will use enticements to lure his prey. And a when human is devoured by the Satan they become devoid of humanness and thus a puppet-disciple of the Evil One. In the novel Perelandra we find a depiction of such a one. His name is Weston.

In Perelandra, the second novel in C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy (see my last two posts for background), we find Ransom the invitee arriving on Perelandra (Venus) and meeting the Green Lady. Ransom finds her to be childlike, innocent, and unspoiled by that which despoiled earth. Upon meeting her, Ransom thinks…

What overwhelmed him was not in the least the fact that she, like himself, was totally naked. Embarrassment and desire were both a thousand miles away from his experience: and if he was a little ashamed of his own body, that shame had nothing to do with the difference of sex and turned only on the fact that he knew his body to be a little ugly and a little ridiculous.

Ransom and the Green Lady converse, trying understand each other and their unique worlds. At one point they both see an object fall from heavy into the sea. Later, Ransom sees Weston (introduced in the previous post) emerge from a spacecraft. Ransom is filled with horror. Why did Weston come to Perealndra? His last encounter with Weston on Malandra was anything but good. Weston was sent back to earth because of his behavior.

Ransom’s initial conversation with the newly arrived Weston, the uninvited, was philosophical and rather benign. It appears that Weston meant to soften Ransom’s attitude toward himself. But Weston soon changes from humanist-philosopher-scientist to an inhuman creature – the Un-man.

Following a night of sleep Ransom awakens and begins walking to find Weston who vanished the day before. As Ransom walks, he comes across a horrible sight – a mutilated frog. As he goes further, he finds a trial of mutilated frogs, unthinkable in the unspoiled teeming world of Perelandra. At the end of the trial he finds Weston mutilating a frog with his long sharp nails.

Here’s what Ransom thought when he encountered the figure of Weston:

If Ransom said nothing, it was because he could not speak. He saw a man who was certainly not ill, to judge from his easy stance and the powerful use he had just been making with his fingers. He saw a man who was certainly Weston, to judge from his height and build and coloring and features. In that sense he was quite recognizable. But the terror was that he was also unrecognizable. He did not look like a sick man: but looked like a very dead one. The face which he raised from torturing the frog had that terrible power which the face of a corpse sometimes has of simply rebuffing every conceivable human attitude one can adopt towards it. The expressionless mouth, the unwinking stare of the eyes, something heavy and inorganic in the very folds of the cheek, said clearly: “I have features as you have, but there is nothing in common between you and me.’ It was this that kept Ransom speechless…the conviction [came] that this, in fact, was not a man: that Weston’s body was kept, walking and undecaying, in Perelandra by some wholly different kind of life, and that Weston himself was gone…

Weston’ body, traveling in a space-ship, had been the bridge by which something else had invaded Perealndra – whether that supreme and original evil whom they call the Bent One, or one of his lesser followers, made no difference.

 

As you read on you see that evil has devoured Weston. He is not content to keep it to himself. Evil is isolating. Weston or It must corrupt those around It for company in hell. And so, Weston begins to ply the Green Lady with words. He tells her that Maledil, The Lord of the universe, wouldn’t mind if she went to the Fixed Land (forbidden to her). He tells her that good will come of it and that Maledil desires for her to break His word to her.

With endless words and cajoling Weston entices the Green Lady. Ransom tries to refute Weston’s untruth and the confusion he is invoking in the Green Lady. At one point he says, “In our world to be older is not always to be wiser.”.

Going back to Ransom’s and Weston’s initial conversation occurring when Weston arrived on Perelandra and the one before Weston was de-humanized into the walking dead, we learn of the synthetic gnostic thinking which had enticed him and reduced him to his low estate. Here’s Weston, the Tempter, responding to Ransom:

“Now your mentioning the Devil is very interesting, “said Weston, who had by this time quite recovered his normal manner. “It is a most interesting thing in popular religion, this tendency to fissiparate, to breed pairs of opposites: heaven and hell, God and Devil. I need hardly say that in my view no real dualism in the universe is admissible; to reject these pairs of doublets as pure mythology. It would have been a profound error. The cause of this universal religious tendency is to be sought much deeper. The doublets are really portraits of Spirit., of cosmic energy – self-portraits, indeed, for it is the Life-Force itself which has been deposited in our brains.” …

“Your Devil and your God, “said Weston, “are both pictures of the same Force.”

(Regarding aspects of dualism, see my previous post Don’t Adjust the Contrast. Regarding the dehumanizing aspects of evil read Perelandra.)

What are the characteristics of evil shown on Perelandra and about us in various measure on earth?

Evil is grandiose. Weston boasted of all the benefits the Green Lady would obtain by doing things his way.

Evil is manipulative. Evil will use good attributes (beauty, older and wiser, etc.) to ensnare a person to do evil.

Evil holds up a self-gratifying mirror for the headstrong: “Malignant narcissism is characterized by an unsubmitted will.” Scott Peck, M.D. People of the Lie*

Evil people lack the motivation to be good but want to appear good. The will consistently lie to protect their appearance and to deceive themselves.

Conversations with evil people will always create confusion.

Nothing is ever fair for those in the thrall of evil. The evil live in an unsatisfied state.

Evil people are chronic scapegoaters. The evil lash out at others who don’t affirm them. The evil project their own perverted emotional state onto others. They have no problem calling people some form of phobic.

Evil people are consistent with their sins. Evil is known by its rotten fruits.

Evil people are destructive. They do not forgive others. And they do not forgive themselves because they do not acknowledge their sin or guilt.

Evil people refuse to have any sense of their sinfulness. They refuse self-examination. They deaden their conscience. They become very defensive against any personal responsibility and guilt.

 

Now, no one is born evil. (I don’t accept the premise of original sin whereby sin is somehow transmitted via the parents to a newborn child. Each person is born a tabula rasa regarding sin.) A person can become evil by continuing to deceive themselves. Out of that self-deception they will make a series of choices which degrade the truth. They will compound lies and compartmentalize them into their evil self so as to look normal on the outside. They must maintain their outward moral purity at all costs. They are the people of the lie*. Evil parents maintain a perverse environment which breeds the mental illness of evil in their children. The evil work to inhibit the spiritual growth of others.

The embrace of evil doesn’t happen overnight. As Ransom listens to Weston drone on in endless babble, he thinks…

If the remains of Weston were, at such a moments, speaking through the lips of the Un-man, then Weston was not a man at all. The forces which had begun, perhaps years ago, to eat away his humanity had now been slowly poisoning the intelligence and the affectation had now at last poisoned itself and the whole psychic organism had fallen to pieces. Only a ghost was left – and everlasting unrest, a crumbling, a ruin, an odour of decay. “And this, “thought Ransom, “might be my destination; or hers [the Green Lady].

 

As Followers of the Lord of the Universe it is important for to understand evil. But we should not focus on evil or be overcome by evil or call others evil. We are to recognize the dynamics of evil so that we can discern when we are being tempted to synthesize what God calls good with what God has called sinful. There is much of this Gnostic synthesis going on churches today in their effort to be inclusive.

“Inclusive” is the popular political word that on the surface sounds wonderful. Yet, it hides the dreadful desire to purge the dualism God has put in place and to replace it with New Age pluralism. God’s dualism is deemed too harsh and too exclusive. Remember, there is territorial spiritual warfare going on all around us. This warfare affects our culture and our politics. The forces for good battle the forces for evil. As C.S. Lewis put it, “There is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every split second is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.” Weston’s efforts to entice the Green Lady reveal the extent to which the forces of evil will go to persuade one to come over to the dark side:

It was on those lines that the enemy now worked almost exclusively. Though the [Green] Lady had no word for Duty he [Weston] made it appear to her in light of a Duty that she should continue to fondle the idea of disobedience, and convinced her that it would be a cowardice if she repulsed him. The ideas of the Great Deed, of the Great Risk, of a kind of martyrdom, were presented to her every day, varied in a thousand forms.

The Tempter goes on to entice the Green lady into disobedience with feminism.

 

 

As recounted in part above, what Weston embraced leading to his mental illness and dehumanized state is common to modern man under the rainbow. Weston proceeded to take his poisoned soul over the rainbow to another planet where he began to sow seeds of deception with the likes of “Did Maledil really say that?”. Don’t be deceived or devoured by evil. For now, the Followers of Jesus are to be the people of the tension – choosing the good and abhorring the evil all around us.

“See here,” Jesus continued, “I’m sending you out like sheep surrounded by wolves. So be shrewd as snakes and as innocent of doves.” Matthew10:16

 

 

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I recommend C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy. The above passages are only a small selection from a trio of novels which depict good and evil and more spiritual realities via fiction. You’ll be better for it.

*I recommend M. Scott Peck’s People of the Lie, The Hope for Healing Human Evil, quoted above. Peck, a psychiatrist, provides eye-opening accounts and descriptions of human evil.

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