Faith in Dialog with Einstein

September 17, 2023 Leave a comment

Can’t see the forest from the trees? Can’t see anything but a thicket of theology? Maybe it’s time for stepping back, reassessing, and gaining a broader perspective . . . for the future of your faith.

In 1944 Robert Thornton, a young African American philosopher of science, wrote to Albert Einstein. Thorton had just finished his Ph.D. and was about to begin a new job teaching physics at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez. Thornton wanted to introduce “as much of the philosophy of science as possible” [the “forest”] into the modern physics course that he was to teach the following spring. He was hoping for support. Einstein offered this reply:

“I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today—and even professional scientists—seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is—in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth. “(Einstein to Thornton, 7 December 1944, EA 61–574)[i] (Emphasis mine.)

Writing in A Theory of Everything (That Matters): A Short Guide to Einstein, Relativity and the Future of Faith,[ii] the former atheist and currently Oxford’s Emeritus Professor of Science and Religion Alister McGrath[iii] writes that “For Einstein, it was important to develop a unified Weltbild – a coherent and comprehensive way of seeing our world – that would allow individual trees to be seen and appreciated for what they were while at the same time seeing them as part of something greater.[iv](p93).

“A coherent and comprehensive way of seeing our world” is the point of a Theory of Everything (That Matters):

“One of the central themes of this volume is the need to reflect on Einstein’s belief that it was possible to hold together – if not weave together into a coherent unity – his views on science, ethics, politics and religion.”[v] (p89)

Einstein sought a unified theory of everything. That makes him an “excellent dialogue partner”[vi], per McGrath. Without naming a contentious issue but implying a context of Christianity vs. science, the professor asks “What might a Christian learn from Einstein? How does Einstein inform and engage with a Christian ‘big picture’ of the world?”

To help us understand Einstein’s way of thinking, the “short guide’ places Einstein in history (WWI, WWII, a Jew in Nazi Germany, Atomic weapons) and in line with a science great- Issac Newton.

Newton had published (in 1687) his Principia “which set out his three laws of motion, the modern concepts of force and mass, and the new and deeply counterintuitive concept of universal gravitation.” (p31) Newton had a hand in developing differential and integral calculus and discovered that white light is made up of colored rays. From one genius to the next.

1905, Albert Einstein worked as a clerk in a Swiss patent office. His job was not challenging so he began thinking about physics problems posed in physics journals!

We learn about the Einstein’s brilliant theoretical account of the photelectric effect and the nature of light which challenged the classical notions of the nature of light.

“Although Einstein went on to gain worldwide fame after the end of the Great war for his general theory of relativity, a Nobel prize in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, the roots of that latter fame lay in a series of four groundbreaking articles in he published in the leading journal Annel der Physik (Annals of Physics) in 1905.”[vii] (33)

McGrath provides simplified explanations of Einsetin’s revolutionary theories, including the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity (developed using thought experiments), the equivalence of matter and energy (e=mc²), and the general theory of relativity (converting gravitational physics into the geometry of space-time, space-time being an elastic structure which is deformed by the presence, in its midst, of mass-energy).

Beside noting Einstein’s outside-the-box scientific achievements, McGrath also has the reader see that Einstein cared about greater issues. Here, McGrath quotes Einstein:

“By painful experience we have learnt that rational thinking does not suffice to solve problems of our social life. Penetrating research and keen scientific work have often had tragic implications for mankind, producing, on the one hand, inventions which liberated man from exhausting physical labor . . .  but on the other hand . . . creating the means for his own mass destruction.”[viii]

Einstein, as McGrath explains, was not a religious man in the sense of religious ritual. He was aware of Jewish texts but he was not a practicing Jew. And though Einstein did not believe in a personal God, he did not shut out a belief in a ‘superior mind’ behind the universe. This belief came out the awe and wonder he experienced in discerning the complexity and coherence of the universe.

McGrath remarks that “Einstein’s approach was to treat science and religion as two distinct aspects of our attitude to our universe. . ..

“His core aim was to consider the relationship of two different realms or modalities of human thought: science (facts) and religion (values).”[ix] (P123) He quotes Einstein: “Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be.”[x] (p125) McGrath goes on to say . . .

“Tensions arise, Einstein suggests, when religion intervenes ‘into the sphere of science’ – for example, in treating the Bible as a scientific text – or when science attempts to establish human ‘values and ends’.”[xi]

Professor McGrath, with A Theory of Everything (That Matters), would have us consider that there are Two Books revealing “Divinity”- Christianity’s scripture and natural sciences. The “Two Books” metaphor, as McGrath notes[xii], emerged during the Renaissance when the natural sciences took off, with the aid of telescopes and microscopes and experimentation, and replaced the church-controlled narrative about nature.

Encouraging a dialog with Einstein’s coherent and comprehensive way of seeing our world, Professor McGrath would have us, I believe, begin to think beyond what we think we know and what we swear to and use to accuse others of being deceived (see below).

We live in a scientific universe, not just a theological universe. With that in mind, I hope that you will read this book. I recommend the book for homeschoolers. The science is written for laymen. A thinking-outside-the-box philosophy of science like Einstein’s is good for one’s education and faith. Thinking that includes both scripture and natural science will enrich your faith. And who knows what you may discover as you venture beyond the thicket!

And why was the tree stumped?  Because it couldn’t get to the root of the problem.

I hope you will listen to the podcast.

Alister McGrath – Journey of Science Journey of Faith

This podcast discusses two of Alister McGrath’s s more recent books: A Theory of Everything (that Matters) and Narrative Apologetics. The conversation ranges from talking about Einstein’s religious beliefs and how they open a door for exploring the relationship between science and theology, to the importance of storytelling for Christian Apologetics.

28. Alister McGrath | Journey of Science, Story of Faith | Language of God (biologos.org)

~~~~~

During the podcast, Alister mentions that he had received a microscope as a child.

When I was about ten-years-old, my father gave me a microscope for a Christmas present. I was delighted. All my other childhood gifts had been, shall I say, for kids. The microscope came with specimen slides, so I could start my discoveries that day.

Except for that one wonderous time, I was not raised to think about science. And nature, where I had spent a lot of time as a child, was not something you thought about except for the weather. It was just there.

I was raised to think of everything in terms of scripture. Nature was taught and preached as Psalm 19, six literal days of material creation, a worldwide flood, and as a place to escape and be raptured from, as in “this world is not my home I’m just a-passing through . . .”  This became for me a fragmentary view of things, especially as I engaged others with my scripted view of the universe. To be honest, most of my church experience has been intellectually stifling.

So, I began to read books about physics, astrophysics, genomics, and other science texts. I took an interest in astronomy and ornithology, the study of birds. (Astronomers stay up very late and bird song seems to happen early in the morning, so I have to change my ways.)

I also read and researched the contexts of OT and NT scripture using the works of scholars like John Walton, Richard Bauckham, N.T. Wright and others. I wanted to grow intellectually and engage my imagination. And that is why I found McGrath’s book so interesting. I wanted to know more than what had been handed to me.

I also starting memorizing whole passages of scripture, as memorizing individual verses is taking them out of context. You see the latter often mis-used on social media. Memorizing whole passages of scripture – I’ve memorized four Psalms and five-and-a-half chapters of the Gospel of Mark – puts me into the context. With the Psalms, I am the one reflecting and reminding myself of God’s sovereignty and of His loving care for creation. With the Gospel according to Mark, I feel like I am there. In Mark 6:37, for example, when Jesus says to me, “You give them something to eat” what do I do?

I thought that there was only thing I had in common with a genius like Einstein – what Einstein stated about himself: “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” Then I read A Theory of Everything (That Matters): A Short Guide to Einstein, Relativity and the Future of Faith.

Each of us is born into a passed-down way of understanding the world that later informs our judgements. Einstein’s cultivation of a philosophical habit of mind, his questioning attitude, provided his independence of judgement. That is something I share with Einstein.

Speaking of in terms of scientific advancement, Einstein writes about challenging a handed-down way of thinking in his “1916 memorial note for Ernst Mach, a physicist and philosopher to whom Einstein owed a special debt”:

“Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such an authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens. Thus they come to be stamped as “necessities of thought,” “a priori givens,” etc. The path of scientific advance is often made impassable for a long time through such errors. For that reason, it is by no means an idle game if we become practiced in analyzing the long commonplace concepts and exhibiting those circumstances upon which their justification and usefulness depend, how they have grown up, individually, out of the givens of experience. By this means, their all-too-great authority will be broken. They will be removed if they cannot be properly legitimated, corrected if their correlation with given things be far too superfluous, replaced by others if a new system can be established that we prefer for whatever reason. (Einstein 1916, 102”)[xiii] (Emphasis mine.)

“What might a Christian learn from Einstein? How does Einstein inform and engage with a Christian ‘big picture’ of the world?”

~~~~~

“Abandon the urge to simplify everything, to look for formulas and easy answers, and to begin to think multidimensionally, to glory in the mystery and paradoxes of life, not to be dismayed by the multitude of causes and consequences that are inherent in each experience — to appreciate the fact that life is complex.”
― M. Scott Peck, (1936–2005), American psychiatrist and best-selling author

[i] Letter to Robert Thornton, dated 7 December 1944. Einstein Archive, Reel 6-574

[ii] A Theory of Everything (That Matters): A Short Guide to Einstein, Relativity and the Future of Faith,

[iii] Professor Alister McGrath | Faculty of Theology and Religion (ox.ac.uk)

[iv] Ibid 93

[v] Ibid 89

[vi] Ibid 135

[vii] Ibid 33

[viii] Ibid 63

[ix]  Ibid 123

[x] Ibid 125

[xi] Ibid 124

[xii] Ibid 141

[xiii] Einstein’s Philosophy of Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

~~~~~

As I finished reading the book and started writing this post, I became engaged in a conversation on social media. My intent was to propose a different perspective than what I would call a locked-in “fundamentalist literal” perspective. Below are the screen captures.

Andrew Torba, CEO of GAB, posted the initial comment of the Tower of Babel below. Note the number “likes” for what he posted. Some of the replies were from those who thought it more Christian nonsense. I stepped in with my comment and then someone began commenting back. Here’s the dialog:

Links I provided:

The Genesis Flood Through Ancient Eyes: An Interview with John Walton and Tremper Longman – Article – BioLogos

John Walton – “Lost World of the Flood” – YouTube

John Walton: The Meaning of the Tower of Babel

Bible Podcast Studying Christian Theology (bibleproject.com)

Filed under Christianity, cosmology, Science Tagged with , , , , ,

Masters of the Future, Masters of Faith

January 22, 2023 Leave a comment

Klaus Schwab, the creepy front man for the World Economic Forum, opened the annual confab of the global cabal in Davos, Switzerland with a call to “master the future.”

“We couldn’t meet at a more challenging time. We are confronted with so many crises simultaneously. What does it mean to master the future?”

“I think, to have a platform where all stakeholders of global society are engaged. Governments, businesses, civil society, the young generation—and I could go on. I think is the first step to meet all the challenges.”

Challenges? Stakeholders? Resolutions?

The WEF Declares 2023 the Year of “Polycrisis”:

Regarding the “polycrisis,” the WEF assembled an extensive matrix of threats facing the world. The top five short-term risks were the “cost-of-living crisis, natural disasters and extreme weather, geo-economic confrontation, failure to mitigate climate change, and erosion of social cohesion and societal polarization. . . “the top four most severe risks over the next 10 years are all environmental.”

Note: except for Natural disasters and extreme weather (force majeure) the “unprecedented multiple crises” or “Polycrisis” mentioned above have all been manufactured by stakeholders to produce a certain outcome.

The extensive matrix of threats facing the world are media hyped. Fear mongering using disaster scenarios and the urgency to act – without a second thought – is found in media narratives. If it doesn’t bleed a crisis narrative, it doesn’t lead.

Natural disaster and calamity are given to us to remind mankind of its powerlessness, and to turn us aside from our arrogance. But that doesn’t deter the proud.

Here in America, inflation and the cost-of living crisis is a crisis the Biden regime created with its socialist green new deal along with the ruinous overspending by Congress (see the recent $1.7 trillion Omnibus Bill). Geo-economic confrontation (wars and rumors of wars?) occurs because greedy and pompous leaders see themselves as masters of the future. The climate change catastrophe is a manufactured crisis as was the COVID pandemic. Erosion of social cohesion and societal polarization –Marxists erode social cohesion; the WEF supports race relations antagonism and the fragmentation of society.

The WEF future peddlers and predators view all of the world as one that can be controlled – reset – and mastered. They plan to do all this by 2030.

“Under the theme of ‘Cooperation in a Fragmented World’, we’ll look at how we can tackle the numerous and interlinked challenges the world is facing and find solutions through public-private cooperation.” –Davos 2023 Day 1: What to expect | World Economic Forum (weforum.org).

So, many of the same people who created the havoc and hell on earth with the COVID planned-demic and talked “Build Back Better” will be the same people “cooperating” in a public-private way to “fix’ things for the future.

Here, in three short videos, is International independent journalist Noor Bin Ladin reporting from Davos about the WEF’s “mastering the future” agenda:

“If no one power can enforce order, our world will suffer from a global order deficit.” 

-Klaus Schwab

Davos 2023: Major institutions, corporations, billionaires and governments, along with the media, are actively consolidating forces to produce a “one power” world. To wit, the FBI has been “cooperating” with big tech to purge dissenting Americans the DOJ has labeled “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists” from public discourse. The following should scare the heck out of you:

One writer says that we should fear the Globalist American Empire more than the bond-villain-like Klaus Schwab. I agree. The GAE are more manipulative. Another writer says that All NWO Roads Lead to Israel. I also agree. And, this would comport with the what’s written in the Revelation of John. I would have no doubt that many godless and Christ-rejecting Jews are behind “mastering the future” programs. They will chose lesser gods.

If you have listened to or read any of the WEF’s grandiose word-salad propaganda, you never come across a mention of God. The WEF, you see, is a humanist and materialist anti-Christ organization. It is not aligned with “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. Rather, it is aligned with” My kingdom come, My will be done, on across the earth as it is in my stake holdings.”

The Globalist Lord’s Prayer is a prayer for more wealth transfer. To wit, per Anthony Blinken, Secretary of State “a significant new security assistance package to help Ukraine” is in the works.

This package, which totals $2.5 billion, will bring total U.S. military assistance for Ukraine to an unprecedented approximately $27.5 billion since the beginning of the Administration. (Emphasis mine)

(Ukraine is not a U.S. ally. It’s a money laundering country. Ukraine’s border problem is Europe’s issue. Let Europe pay for guns and supplies. U.S., DO NOT escalate this fight. Nuclear war is on the table!)

“The theme of our meeting in Davos is cooperation in a fragmented world,” Klaus stated. In what the WEF calls the “Year of the Polycrisis,” Klaus declared that “economic, environmental, social, and geopolitical crises are converging and conflating, creating an extremely versatile and uncertain future.

The resolution of uncertainties is a very human concern. For the WEF and its Globalist cabal, resolution of uncertainties entails wealth transfers, complete digitization of life, monitoring every move, purchase, and association. We will eat and live as we are told. This will be our Orwellian future under the “masters of the future” unless we say “NO!” to their every incursion into our lives.

*****

Perspective:

I cannot know individual motives. I can only base my opinion on messaging and methods and the obvious.

Let’s start here. The WEF has an underlying set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe. The WEF has a “global order” moral code to govern the conduct of human affairs. As you will learn, globalist morality will be compulsory.

Any institutionalized system that practices, with ardor and faith, a cause, principle, or system of beliefs and creates disciples is a religion. The WEF has obvious characteristics of a religion. (Even the godless have to believe in and worship something.)

The Global Order religion views the world through a materialist lens. Its practitioners employ a faith in means – the means to an end, as in seizing the means of production. Such is their communistic bent. They will take control of businesses for “the greater good”.

What we are witnessing now, via the WEF, is a “cooperative” takeover of businesses. But once the New World Order is fully established, those who think that they will remain in control of their businesses will find out that another, perhaps a DEI candidate, will be in charge. NWO party commissars will be in charge to teach party principles and party loyalty.

The Global Order religion will use everything in their stakeholder power to force a New World Order in our “hyper partisan, hyper polarized time”.

The Global Order religion is not a new way of thinking about and managing mankind and civilization. “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains” is the opening sentence of Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1712–1778) essay The Social Contract.

Rousseau, like many since, assumed that man by nature is a free and innocent being. Man, he insisted, was born with the potential for goodness but civilization, with its envy, self-consciousness, and competition has made men bad. 

Fellow philosopher Voltaire charged Rousseau with primitivism, accusing him of wanting to make people go back and walk on all fours. One will find similar noble savage myths in the environmental movement’s talk of the Axial Age and the Dark Green religion (see Iain Proven’s Convenient Myths: The Axial Age, Dark Green Religion, and the World That Never Was)

When institutions are fixed, Rousseau believed, mankind will respond in positive social ways.

Today we hear of “systemic racism” and the need for “change we can believe in”,  “fundamental transformation” and a “Great Reset”. As more and more American institutions become aligned with the globalist collective, it will be out with the old and in with the new Global Order religion.

And with each transition we see the perverse irony in the WEF’s “rules-based order” and the consensus implied in The Social Contract of Rousseau:  man who is “born free”, is to take on the “chains” imposed by the institutions of the globalist collective for a better “future”. With each transition we see that globalist utopia means global dystopia.

For the Christian, the materialist view of the world is way too small and incomplete. Christians view the world through a much broader lens. The wide-angle lens includes both the physical world and, by the operation of faith, “the things that can’t be seen. After all, the things you can see are here today and gone tomorrow; but the things you can’t see are everlasting.”  (2 Cor. 4:18).

It is a down-to-earth view that includes man, not as an innocent being, but man as corrupted by sinful choices and yet redeemable because of Christ. It is a view that sees that the whole of creation is groaning as it waits for redemption. It is a elevated view that sees the Kingdom of God and the restoration of the cosmic order.

The Christian views the material world relation to the transcendent. For one example, read the poem God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Faith, as described in Hebrews 1: 1-3, is the means to bolster our confidence about things we can’t see or see as puzzling reflections in glass (1 Cor. 13: 12). Faith is the means to see past, present and future in the hands of the One who is the same yesterday, today and forever.

With confidence bolstered we can move out from a dark cave-dwelling existence of disturbing shadows – the Shadowlands – and look ahead into the broad daylight and Reality. We faith it out as did Abraham:

“Off he went, not knowing where is going.” . . .  “He was looking ahead, you see, “to the city which has its foundations, the city of which God is the designer and builder”. (Heb. 11:8, 10).

Did Abraham really imagine a city such as that? We don’t know. We do know that tent-dweller Abraham who lived under a starry canopy had been promised descendants as many as the stars . . .. “the designer and builder” of all that is above would make sure of it.

Challenges? Stakeholders? Resolutions?

Christians deal with challenges not by making others do want we want as the WEF is proposing. We face challenges head on by faith. Read Hebrews 11. There, we read of people whose faith transcended the threat of pain and death by political mercenaries.

Christians are stakeholders in both the seen and unseen. We seek resolutions to a disordered cosmos. And so, we pray, we faith, we work. We pray, we faith, we work.  We pray, we faith, and we work every day.

Who holds the future? Not those called to “master the future” by the World Economic Forum. Masters of faith know Who holds the future and act accordingly.

Why were you and I born in this space and time? It was to know the grace and love of God in our times and to hold the world, the flesh and devil in check.

“God leads us step by step, from event to event. Only afterward, as we look back over the way we have come and reconsider certain important moments in our lives in the light of all that has followed them, or when we survey the whole progress of our lives, do we experience the feeling of having been led without knowing it, the feeling that God has mysteriously guided us.” -Paul Tournier

And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith. – Søren Kierkegaard

*****

The imagination plays an important part in faith. It should be no surprise to a Christian that the media militates against imagination leading to faith. The media images and sounds are from a world moving in the direction of the NWO. The media constantly lies, telling us to deny what know to be true. The media is paid to do so.

Protestants have banished images from their religious practice. And yet they fill their lives with media images. Huh. How can faith take hold without a holy imagination?

More on this in another post.

*****

Wise words from Fr. Chad Ripperger on the State of Evil in the World, Jan. 5th, 2023.

“The demons know their time is coming.” He speaks of a remnant. “God made man for rightly ordered worship.”

*****

The Men Who Made Klaus Schwab and The World Economic Forum – The Expose (expose-news.com)

The WEF Is A Cult Wrapped In A Grift Wrapped In An Enigma – Climate Change Dispatch

Elite Attend Davos In Private Jets, Tout ‘Carbon Footprint’ Trackers For Plebs – Climate Change Dispatch

Former UK Prime Minister Calls for “National Digital Infrastructure” to Track People’s Vaccination Status in the Event of Pandemic (VIDEO) (thegatewaypundit.com)

WEF: U.S. Will Soon Make Hate Speech Illegal, Says EU Commissioner (breitbart.com)

*****

The Controlled Opposition: Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Dennis Prager

Has Moody Bible Institute become controlled opposition?

The Disturbing Origins of Ben Shapiro and the Rest of Conservative Incorporated | The Red Elephants (gab.com)

Comedian Tyler Fischer does hilarious impressions of Ben Shapiro, Jordan Petersen, and other “influencers” and their online drama… – Revolver News

*****

Informed Dissent:

Let’s start with fear porn . . .

Hmmmm:

Vax used for population control . . .

EXCLUSIVE: Pfizer’s secret guide for how to make a vaccine “safe and effective” (substack.com)

Even more proof: Masks don’t work (substack.com)

Opinion | How to stop overcounting covid deaths and hospitalizations – The Washington Post (archive.is)

“BBC is the Virus” – At Least 6 BBC Buildings Across UK Covered with Photos of People Who Died from COVID Vaccine (VIDEO) (thegatewaypundit.com)

Sudden “Coincidental” Deaths:

25-Year-Old Doctor of Pharmacy Who Ran Multiple “Vaccine” Clinics Dies Suddenly ⋆ 🔔 The Liberty Daily

Former American Idol Contestant Dies Suddenly at 31 After Suffering ‘Apparent Heart Attack’ (thegatewaypundit.com)

2-Year-Old Child Dies Suddenly One Day After Receiving Both the COVID Vaccine and Annual Flu Vaccine (thegatewaypundit.com)

Dr. Harriet Hall, Staunch Critic of Anti-vaxxers and Alternative Medicine, Dies in Her Sleep (thegatewaypundit.com)

UPitt Pharm Student Lindsay Heck Dies Suddenly At 25 Years Old | Dauphin Daily Voice

MUST SEE: Ultra MAGA Combines Blatant Lies by Fauci and DC Elites with TGP TRUTHS… “No Question – It’s Mass Homicide” -EPIC VIDEO (thegatewaypundit.com)

Our Representatives:

Congressional Democrat Moves to End Free Speech for White People – National File

Indiana’s Todd Young voted for respect for Marriage Act

“gays just want to get married” – Isn’t that what many conservatives have no problem with.

Todd Young, Indiana’s senator, you replied to my message speaking against the “Respect for Marriage” Act saying that you voted for the Act to give married gays “dignity’. I replied that you don’t know the LGBTQ community. Gays discharge dignity to live their lifestyle. You virtue signaling fool!

According to a copy of the 17-count indictment Townhall has obtained, the adoptive dads allegedly performed oral sex on both boys, forced the children to perform oral sex on them, and anally raped their sons. . . .

William admitted to forcing his 11-year-old adopted son to perform an act of sodomy, a.k.a. “oral copulation,” on him “with the intent to satisfy his own…sexual desire,” reads a sworn affidavit filed in support of William’s overnight arrest back on July 27. . . .

An updated criminal affidavit says the child sexual abuse was filmed by William’s husband Zachary, “with whom he routinely engaged in sexually abusive acts” on the boy. Zachary, the household’s breadwinner, confessed to being the cameraman, and authorities allegedly found a folder on his cell phone—labeled “US”—that contained videos of William sexually abusing the child.

UPDATE: Gruesome Details Released in Gay Activist Couple’s Crimes on Their Adopted Sons (Warning on Content) (thegatewaypundit.com)

Investigation Uncovers an LGBTQ Pedo-Ring Using Adopted Kids For Sex and Porn Videos (bitchute.com)

Filed under 2023 current events, Christianity, Communism, cultural Marxism, Culture, Political Commentary, Progressivism, social commentary, social engineering, socialism, totalitarianism 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 , , , , , , , , , ,

All Things Held Together in Two Books

May 8, 2022 Leave a comment

A college physics course experiment was an eye-opener. The purpose of the experiment was to measure the earth’s gravitational acceleration from an object in free fall. (See PDF below for an example). But that day in the physics lab the experiment took on greater significance. I found out that God has two books – scripture and science – and the books go hand in hand.

As I see it, scripture provides the origin and context for all understanding. From the ancient cosmology starting point In the beginning God created the heavens and earth to John the Elder introducing us to the incarnation of that cosmology – Jesus, the way, the truth and life.

 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:1–3) 

Science can explain the material world, the mechanisms of creation and the forces (gravity, tension, spring, etc.) at work on earth in sublime mathematical terms. In fact, four fundamental forces make it possible for humans (and scripture) to exist in the habitable zone called earth.

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I grew up in a Sola Scriptura universe. I attended Baptist and Bible churches for the first half of my life. I attended Moody Bible Institute after high school. These institutions posited the trinity of scripture, right living, and evangelism. These mattered most in that constrained cosmology. The material world seemed immaterial to those who preached and taught, except for tithing and the payment of room and board.

In that context, gospel songs seemed to promote a disdain for the physical world:

This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through,
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue;
The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door,
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.

This world is not my home? Hmmm. Why did God create the material heavens and earth? And why did God bother giving material creation order and function to fashion a temple where He could dwell with man, as described in Genesis 1 and 2? Why bother setting up a temple garden? Are we meant to look down on creation from some heavenly perch?

During those times of sermons and studies, I heard nothing about the material nature of things or of science. By its avoidance it implied, for me at least, that the material world was linked with “the natural man” and the world, the flesh, and the devil. As such, the material world needed to be done away with the parts of me that were sinful (Col. 3:5). There was also the highly popular but errant end-time teaching and best-selling books describing a rapture that would whisk believers away from corrupted earth.

But that day in the lab as I calculated the acceleration due to gravity, I understood that a force acted to keep me on the earth. I also realized that I had come across a companion book to scripture. Scripture says Jesus holds all things together (Col. 1:17). Science says that gravity is the force the holds everything in the universe together. That day I realized that the Lord was increasing the magnitude of my cosmology with a down-to-earth experiment.

Science offered me new insight into God the Creator. Matter matters to God. Holding things together matters to God. Jesus offering his body and blood as true food and drink in the material elements of bread and wine took on new meaning.

Why study the mechanical nature of things? Why study science? For several reasons: Everything in the natural world is a sign, a trace, an echo, an image and a sacrament of the triune God. The goodness of God is diffused into His good creation. As such, everything in creation has been given a profound relationality with a space to be and a sense of particularity so that it is encountered and not just used.

Why study the science of things? Because God made them to be studied. God made the unpredictability of quantum physics for us to puzzle over, to reflect on and then to uncover its mysteries, e.g., light as both particle and wave. The contemplative exercise is necessary for science. And, it what’s required for our theology of the mysterious three-in-one Trinity.

Why study the science of things? Because nothing is stamped on the bottom, “made by God.” That’s for us to find out. We were created to look into mysteries and to be scientists.

Of course, there are people who are terrified of looking at information that doesn’t align with what they have been told for so many years. When I told my mother that I accepted the thinking that the universe came into existence with the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago and the theory of evolutionary creationism, she told me “That’s heresy! I have no doubt that she prayed for my soul after that call. Mom is now with the Lord. Her concerns have been allayed.

I have read and been wowed by many science texts including books about genomics, quantum physics, astrophysics, and the periodic table. I’ve learned that God creates in particular and yet everything created is related. Electrons are relational to protons and neutrons. The periodic table reveals that relationality.

As I recorded data that remarkable day in the physics lab, I said “This is soooooo cool!” I felt an incredible sense of awe and wonder. I had found the relationality of scripture and science.

And he is ahead, prior to all else,

And in him all things hold together

–The Letter of Paul to the Colossians 1: 17

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An approaching moving day and what it involves prompted this post. As with every previous move, I need to sort through things to see what stays behind and what goes forward. The same process of sorting out of what makes sense to keep applies to one’s reasoning and faith, to one’s understanding of science and scripture, and to achieving maturity.

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Denis Alexander

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Links:

The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion (cam.ac.uk)

BioLogos – God’s Word. God’s World. – BioLogos

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Experiement – Gravitational AccelerationDownload

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Episode_1839 – The Revolt Of America’s Moms A Mother’s Day Special”. Released: 2022.

Episode_1840 The Revolt Of America’s Moms A Mother’s Day Special Cont.”. Released: 2022.

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Step Outside

March 7, 2021 Leave a comment

“Late last month the Boundary Waters was named a dark sky sanctuary by the International Dark Sky Association, a nonprofit that works around the world to reduce light pollution and protect night skies. It’s one of just 13 such designations in the world. 

To qualify, a place has to have exceptional starry nights, and a “nocturnal environment that is protected for its scientific, natural or education value, its cultural heritage and/or public enjoyment.

 . . . We’re looking at a sky that people looked at thousands of years ago. And to me it feels like preserving a really special heritage. It’s part of the fabric of the Boundary Waters.”

– Boundary Waters designated a dark sky sanctuary

Many years before this recent designation of “dark sky sanctuary”, I took in the “exceptional starry nights”. I did this during my two-week canoe trips out of Ely, MN into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

The trips were about camping out in a secluded wilderness with close friends. And for me at least, it was about getting out of town and experiencing a different reality. My parents were not campers.

Born and raised in the city of Chicago and later moving to the suburbs, life was lived under manmade illumination.

I ate, played, did homework – did everything – by the light of incandescent, fluorescent or thungsten-halogen lamps. At night I walked or rode my bike under the mango-yellow light of street lamps.

In the Boundary Waters Wilderness there was none of that. When the campfire smoldered out, or when I wandered off from the camp, the firmament provided the only light.

Within that night sky sanctuary, absent of “light pollution”, billions of stars were sending out light. I learned later that the starlight had come to me from the distant past.

The night sky sanctuary is a time machine. Things had been set in motion long before I came around. I needed to step outside my frame of reference to understand this.

****

Within the eyewitness testimony recorded in Mark’s gospel, there is an account not recorded in the other three gospels. We read of a blind man receiving his sight in two stages. The account is situated right after the account of the disciples not “seeing” – not understanding – what is right in from of them.

In Mark chapter 8 vs. 12-21, we find the disciples concerned about not having brought enough bread for their boat crossing. Their concern and confusion began when they did not understand Jesus’ warning.

“Beware!” said Jesus sternly to them, “watch out for leaven – the Pharisees’ leaven, and Herod’s leaven too!”

(One could say that “the leaven of the Pharisees” leads to a rising sense of self-righteousness. And, the “leaven” of Herod leads to a rising sense of self-importance. Both leavens lead to an eclipsing of the light of day.)

Jesus then sternly replies to the disciples and their mumbling about not bringing bread.

“Don’t you get it? Don’t you understand? Have your hearts gone hard? Can’t you see with your two good eyes? Can’t you hear with your two good ears?”

Jesus goes on to point out the obvious to his disciples: they were directly involved in feeding the five thousand and the four thousand. Each time they started with only a few loaves and ended up with baskets full of leftovers. How could they not understand and take in what took place in their presence?

Then comes the account of the man without two good eyes. Mark 8: 22-26:

They arrived at Bethsaida. A blind man was brought to Jesus, and they begged him to touch him. He took his hand, led him outside the village, and put spittle on his eyes. Then he laid hands on him and asked, “Can you see anything?”

“I can see people,” said the man, peering around, “but they look like trees walking about.”

Then Jesus laid his hands on him once more. This time he looked hard, and his sight came back: he could see everything clearly. Jesus sent him back home.

Don’t even go into the village, he said.

The blind man recovers partial sight after Jesus touches him. He gains full sight after Jesus touches him again. The man looks really, really hard all around. Everything then came into view for the once-blind man. He can now “walk perfectly on all his paths.”

Though I’ve read this passage many times before, what stood out this time – Jesus leading the blind man out of the village before restoring his sight. Did the village represent an established framework of thinking – a frame of reference – that needed to be reorientated by Jesus?

Was the variation in setting, from where the man had long groped for a path to outside the village, meant to be an object lesson for the disciples? They also groped for understanding. Did they need to step outside the village understanding of things?

Was the relocation outside the village for the healing a means to clear away obstacles from the man’s path? To straighten out paths for the blind man and the understanding of the disciples?

The disciples and Mark’s readers would no doubt understand the meaning within this account. Seeing and not seeing correlate to understanding and not understanding in words of the prophet Isaiah (Is. 6: 9-10). And both states correlate with the path one walks. This is heard in the words of the Damascus Document found near the Qumran community.

The “Teacher” exhorts the reader to “Listen to me and I shall open your eyes so that you can see and understand the deeds of God . . . so that you can walk perfectly on all his paths” (CD2:14-16)

The gospel of Mark opens with quotes from prophets Isaiah (40:3) and Malachi (3:1) in reference to John the Baptist:

“Look! I am sending my messenger ahead of me; he will clear the way for you! A shout goes up in the desert: Make way for the Lord! Clear a straight path for him!”

In the verses that follow we read of relocation, redirection and the clearing away of impediments in order to walk perfectly.

Mark writes of John the Baptist appearing in the desert announcing a baptism of repentance. A relocation outside the village.

Then we read that “the spirt pushed him (Jesus) out into the desert.” A redirection from villages. (Imagine the night sky over the desert – a dark sky sanctuary declaring the glory of God.)

The blind man, once groping for a path, stepped outside his frame of reference with Jesus. There, he was healed and saw what the disciples had yet come to see– that Jesus is the Frame of Reference. All else is darkness, murkiness, groping, and . . . mumbling.

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2017 Biologos Conference, Astronomer and President of BioLogos Deborah Haarsma: Christ and the Cosmos

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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 , , , , , , , , , ,

What Risk is This?

December 24, 2017 Leave a comment

 

“The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.”  Genesis 12:1

“Some time later God tested Abraham, He said to him, “Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

“Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”” Genesis 22:1-2

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An angel appears to Mary and announces Mary’s pregnancy. Mary responds: “Here am I”, said Mary; “I’m the Lord’s servant-girl. Let it happen to me as you’ve said.” Luke 1: 38

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God says “Go,” and Abram, not a perfect man, goes.

Imagine being told to dig up your roots, leave your familiar surroundings and that you will be told later where you are going. Now imagine going with your first-born son, your flesh and blood and a surety of God’s promise to Abraham, to the region of Moriah and being told that your son is the sacrifice to God. Abraham is told, basically, to go outside the box he had contained God in- his hopes in his pride of place and first-born. Abraham with “Here-I-am” -outside-the-box faith obeys God and God blesses Abraham. “Abraham was now very old, and the LORD had blessed him in every way.” Genesis 24:1

God says to Mary, not a perfect woman, that she will be the one to bear the Savior. She responds with her permission. Later, at Zechariah’s house, Elizabeth sees Mary and shouts at the top of her voice: “Of all women, you’re the blessed one!” One could speculate that before the angel’s news, Mary had thought her life was, well, pretty much boxed in.

 

The boxes people put God in are not big enough for God’s blessing. So, instead of stretching the box, God stretches the person so that they come to see that no box can hold all they know about God.

 

Throughout Israel’s and Christianity’s history there are many accounts of where God has said, in effect, “Go to a new place with me” and a personal risk is taken.  Abraham, Jacob, Moses, the disciples, Peter, Paul, to name just a few. You are not alone in the history of risk-taking or in the moving out of safe-spaces.

Imagine if those who were told to go and those who were led by God to go didn’t go? How would your life be different today? Or, did you think that once you arrived on earth nothing had gone on before you arrived that would have any bearing on your life? There are many today who see themselves this way. They have their “history” and their “truth”.

If you have read the Old Testament you found that the history of Israel is the story of God moving his chosen people through space-time. The Israelites moved from country to country, to slavery, to the land of “milk and honey”, to exile and back home again. They are moved to be tested, refined and blessed. They were moved so that they would realize that God is sovereign and omnipresent – there is no place you can go that God isn’t there. They are being moved so that they will realize that God is the beginning and ending of their journey. They are being told to “Go” so that they will find that God is God and that God is good.

 

Risk taking is going, moving and forgetting what is behind.

 

The pattern of risk taking, testing and blessing occurs over and over in Scripture. God says, “Go” and when people go to a new place with God they are both tested and blessed.

Risk takes us places we never thought we’d go. Risk takes us to new places within God’s space-time and to the farthest extent of God’s promises. Risk takes us to new places within God’s character. The risk-taker decides to remove himself from the comfort of his self-storage home and from the false gods he has stored in his mini self-storage so that blessing will be gained.

 

The God who created probabilistic quantum mechanics is going to take you places where you can’t determine your position or the acceleration of your movement at the same time. Because of that you begin to take your eyes off your circumstances and look at the Cosmological Constant. You are being taught that God’s outcome will be good because He is good. There is a 100 percent probability that God is good. You just need to find this out through risk-taking.

Nature has a way of saying “Go”. The wise men, experts in early astronomy and most likely from Persia, took a major risk. They traveled 800-900 miles following “a star coming out of Jacob.” Herod was not happy at all that the wise men left without detailing the location of his greatest fear — a newborn king. So, Herod slaughtered innocent children.

 

“Get up. Go to the place I will show you. The risk is all mine and I am good with that.”

“Here I am.”

Filed under Christianity, Christmas, Holiday Tagged with , , ,

What is Faith?

February 5, 2017 Leave a comment

 

“Let all things be done decently and in order” I Corinthians 14:40

 

The above verse was repeated so often by my father that it became a joking family rejoinder to whatever was askew at the moment.

My Dutch grandparents epitomized the verse. Their tiny two-bedroom bungalow in Bellwood, Illinois was immaculate. The bungalow’s smaller yard was well-manicured and well-guarded by a chain link fence against intruders of all kinds including rabbits that munched on Marigolds.

My father, before I was born, left the Dutch Christian Reformed church and what he considered its old-country austerity, an austerity that seemed to be reinforced by his hot-tempered foul-mouthed truck-driving father, who “cleaned up” for the Sunday Morning service.

My Swedish grandparents and my mother belonged to a Swedish Evangelical Covenant Church in the Andersonville area of Chicago were they also lived. Like Dutch immigrants, Swedish immigrants were very concerned about cleanliness and presenting a proper and well-kept image to their neighbors. These two immigrant groups were thrilled to be in the New World. The Old World had become too unyielding to make a decent living.

At one point my parents met (in a decent and orderly fashion, of course) and my father aligned himself for a time with the church my mom attended. They would soon marry and later attend the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. That is when and where I was born. The word became flesh and was placed in a crib over a Chinese take-out restaurant.

Fast forward to eleven years after my birth and I am sitting in a Bible church hearing the Four Spiritual Laws for the thousandth time, during a Vacation Bible School assembly. I decided then and there that I would ask Jesus into my heart. My friend did so at the same time. We both received a new Bible after we came forward. The New Bible was the draw for me at the time. A kid will take anything that is free, except peas and carrots.

 

Now, why am I telling you this? Everything in life emerges from relationship. Everything!

 

When someone considers God, they view God through a lens of their worldview or weltanschauung. Most, I suspect, view God through the relationship they have or have had with their parents. The parental relationship may be one of ‘happily ever after’ or one of rancor, division and divorce. A child’s view of God may become skewed when only one parent cares for him or her and the other parent is out of the picture most of the time or all of the time.

The person considering God may also have their view of God reinforced by whatever authority is in their lives, whether it be benevolent or malevolent. He or she may further view God as distant or absent or a non-issue. He or she may view God, as I believe most do, as himself or herself projected. Much of what is called social justice today is a projection of “what would Jesus as me do?” And, he or she may view God as “values-adjusted-God” to reflect one’s compromised ‘ethical’ life, as many Christians do.

But, what about God external to all rational thought and emotional bonding? Our limited minds, our limited reasoning can only summon the past to outline what it is we think we know in the present. And then such determination is a matter of interpretation, whether affixed on atheism or on theism. I suggest that relationship is key to knowing what it is you know and to what you don’t know. And yes, not knowing (meekness, teachableness) is a matter of acquiring humility in today’s Post-Enlightenment world. For a Christian worldview, holding rational thought, paradox and mystery in tension is, I believe, essential. Truth-seekers require both left and right brain hemispheres to be put to work. Why?

The Left-brain does not know what it does not know. The right-brain looks at the big picture and sees that there is mystery. It receives the paradox and supplies the left brain with context the Left-brain doesn’t see. The left brain sees detail and seeks certainty to manipulate the world. The right brain sees the big picture and hands off the context to the left brain for processing.

The Enlightenment has pushed thinking including the consideration of God, into the realm of black and white “certainty” and away from paradox and mystery, away from big questions. The media’s constant barrage of images, of ad-hoc fantasy overwhelms the right-brain, hindering its imagining of a cosmos greater than a tweet or 1440 x 2560 pixels.

Truly, the medium is a message evangelist. The perverse rapid-fire images that we view daily in anonymity enjoin us to paganism.

And as reflected, today’s Epicureans say the gods are distant and so I’ll surround myself with friends who will let say what my truth is and I’ll find sensate pleasure to offset any questions or concerns.

The many atheists (they call themselves “atheists”) I have engaged in conversations all at some point demand certainty. They will ask, “How can any rational mind accept that there is a God?” Well, a purely rational mind cannot know that there is a God. The Left-brain hemisphere will always seek certainty and never find it. The Left-brain hemisphere will always see fragmented pieces of data that mean nothing in themselves. The right-brain ‘sees’ the whole picture including what it doesn’t know and is OK with what it doesn’t know. The right-brain intuits that there is more that can be known while the left-brain balks at such ambiguity.

In my debates with atheists I say that I cannot prove that there is a God but that there is a very high probability that there is a God based on the design of Creation and the extreme fine-tuning of the universe. I mention the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, and gravity. All four finely adjusted constants make life on earth possible.

I go on to say that we only are aware of 5% of the universe and there is 95% of it that we don’t know about, including dark energy and dark matter.  I ask them that “if they can accept the mystery that light is both a wave and a particle why can’t they accept the mystery of a God beyond their understanding?” They are held in check for a moment. They expected me to “blather on about what the Bible says”.  I go on then to tell them that I have a personal relationship with the Infinite-Personal God that is reinforced by my reading of Scripture and my knowledge of the universe and prayer. (This is experiential knowledge that is at least equal to any atheist experiential knowledge). At this point, the atheist will often resort to calling me names and dismissing me out of hand. Out of these many conversations I have come to see that these same folks reject any notion of a relationship with God. Their worldview blocks all other light. So, I try to present a reasonable doubt for the case an atheist presents to me

 

I didn’t know it at the time but my eleven-year-old acceptance of Jesus would become an intimate relationship with Jesus. The big thrust in those days was to get saved and get your ticket to heaven and be ready to get raptured out of here. Sure, there was mention of Jesus as your personal Savior, but the personal part seemed to be that “Jesus died for you and you better behave before you leave this earth on the day of rejoicing”.

As I recall those days, the rigmarole surrounding being “saved” seemed artificial and trite. I heard the same salvation message week after week after week. I was starving for more than the reduction of the get-saved-and-get-the-hell-out-of-here salvation-gospel into 140 characters. As an eleven-year old the only big-ticket ‘certainty’ I had was the intuition that there was a Creator God who loved me. And, my intuition told me that the Eucharist was where to find the immediate reality of Jesus. After all of the twists and turns and sinful trajectories of my life I found a church where the Eucharist provided me the True Reality I sought.

Years later, I have learned to trust the Lord’s covenant faithfulness, which is the righteousness of (not from) God:

God’s covenant justice comes into operation through the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah, for the benefit of all who have faith.” Romans 3:22

What is faith then?

I observe God working in my life daily and in the lives of others I pray for. I see and wonder at the intelligent design of the universe as unfolded over 14.8 billion years. Prayer, mediation and contemplation through music, art and literature informs and strengthens my relationship with the Lord. I hear God speaking to me. My worldview, once colored by projections, has become less opaque, less cloudy, as I am led by the Spirit.

You see, faith is an eye-opening relationship in the absence of logical certainty.

 

“I pray that the God of King Jesus our Lord, the father of glory, would give you, in your spirt, the gift of being wise, of seeing things people can’t normally see, because you are coming to know him, and to have the eyes of your inmost self opened to God’s light.” -the Apostle Paul writing to the churches around Ephesus, 1: 17

~~~

My parent’s life verse speaks of relationship, of covenantal faithfulness, of things working out decently and in order in God’s purview:

“We know in fact, that God works all things together for good to those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.”  Romans 8:28

~~~

Open thou mine eyes

Open thou mine eyes and I shall see, Incline my heart and I shall desire, Order my steps and I shall walk In the ways of thy commandments.

Open thou mine eyes and I shall see, Incline my heart and I shall desire, Order my steps and I shall walk In the ways of thy commandments.

O Lord God, be thou to me a God And beside thee let there be none else, No other, nought else with thee. Vouchsafe to me to worship thee and serve thee According to thy commandments In truth of spirit, In reverence of body, In blessing of lips, In private and in public.

 

Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626)

Filed under Atheism, Christianity Tagged with , , ,

Kingdom Continuum

September 25, 2016 Leave a comment

 

“…how constant, how divine,

this song of ours will rise…”

-David Crowder’s “O Praise Him”

 

The Anglican church I attend will be celebrating one-hundred and fifty years of Kingdom Life in 2018. Preparations are being made by the rectors and vestry to tell the narrative of this faith community. A cloud of witnesses will oversee the events.

Chapel & Cemetery ©Ann Johnson Kingdom Venturers

Chapel & Cemetery ©Ann Johnson Kingdom Venturers

Reflecting on the Kingdom of God several years ago I came to the understanding, with the help of the writings of Pauline Scholar N.T. Wright, that the Kingdom of God on earth is here and now. The Kingdom was inaugurated by Jesus when he walked this earth. Why mention this?

As I walk around on Resurrection ground I am reminded that I walk on the same earth as all the saints from all nations who have gone on before me. Their lives and their faith in God’s covenant faithfulness have made it possible for me to have faith in 2016.  The organism of their faith now lives in me.

Now, I could consider myself an Enlightened person who needs nothing and no one but reason and self but then I would shrink myself into a private rather than a public form of consciousness – a community of one, isolated and where the sacred is eschewed and nihilism offers nothing. Rather, I chose this continuum of faith and have identified myself with it. This continuum has, in turn, given me an identity, through baptism. I placed myself in the waters of the Kingdom Continuum.

Our faith community’s coming together to participate in ages old ritual is with the knowledge that we are under judgement. We must recite what we know to be true about God and about ourselves.

We come together in the liturgy.  The Celebrant starts…

“Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit…Almighty God, unto all hearts are open…Hear what the Lord Jesus Christ said:  Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind…Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Our Kingdom community, in worship of the One True God, recites The Gloria. Together we hear sacred texts read. Together we recite the ancient Nicene Creed. Together we participate in the Prayers of the People. Together we kneel accepting judgement.  Together we confess – say the same thing about our sin as God does – and then hear the words of absolution. We rise to extend God’s Kingdom peace through a handshake or an embrace of the other.

The Eucharist – the Feast of Thanksgiving – is a rite commanded by The One who said “Do this…” and “I’m telling you a solemn truth. If you don’t eat the flesh of the son of man, and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves. Anyone who feasts upon my flesh and drinks my blood has the life of God’s coming age, and I will raise them up on the last day. My flesh is true drink and my blood true drink. Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I remain in him. Just as the living father sent me, and I live because of the father, so the one who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven; it isn’t like bread which the ancestors ate, and died. The one who eats this bread will share the life of God’s new age.” The Word became flesh and the Kingdom Continuum becomes sustainable.

We come together knowing that we stand under judgement but also knowing that there is One of us whose sacrificial death pronounces us restored.  This inversion, our Lord’s sacrifice into sacrament, is a gift that reminds us that we are redeemed:  from fallen to restored.  The judgement of many has been answered by the One Death. And like a Greek tragedy, this our tragedy is reenacted over and over in the hearts and souls and minds of the one-hundred and fifty-year-old faith community that is built on Resurrection ground.

Filed under Anglican, Christianity Tagged with , , , ,

Juxtaposed! News ™ Hot Off the Wire – Climate Control

June 26, 2016 Leave a comment

 

News Anchor: “Good evening.  I am Mary Summers and this is Juxtaposed! News ™ Hot Off the Wire.

We start tonight’s broadcast with a look at climate change.  Dudley Waters has our report from DC.”  Obama UN

Live Cam w/reporter: “The Senate approved a $1.1 billion Zika virus spending bill. The Obama administration then directed that a half a billion dollars from the fund Congress set aside to deal with international infectious diseases be used to help fund a UN agency recently founded to fight climate change.  Here is Senator James Lankford to talk about the spending bill.”

Senator Lankford: “Last week, the Senate passed legislation to address and prevent the spread of the Zika virus. However, the Senate failed to pay for it, and instead approved a $1.1 billion “emergency” spending supplemental bill that is not subject to the budgetary caps that were agreed to last year.

james-lankfordWhile congressional inattention to the budget crisis is inexcusable, it is even more disturbing that the Obama administration already has the authority to pay for a Zika response from existing agency budgets, but chose not to.

I’ve said several times on the Senate floor, over the last two weeks, that the Zika virus is a serious threat and should be dealt with responsibly by funding immediate vaccine research and aggressive mosquito population control.

The threat to adults from Zika is relatively small, but the threat to pre-born children is very high. Our national priority rightly focuses on protecting the life of these young children in the womb, since each child has value, no matter their age or size.”

Live Cam w/reporter: “Thank you Senator.  For more on climate change, here is Patsy Loggins.

Live Cam w/reporter: “Thanks Dudley Waters.  I am here in Jakarta where Secretary of State John Kerry just wrapped up his speech on climate change.  Here are some of his remarks.

Video: “When I think about the array of global climate – of global threats – think about this: terrorism, epidemics, poverty, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction – all challenges that know no borders – the reality is that climate change ranks right up there with every single one of them. This is not opinion. This is about facts. This is about science. The science is unequivocal. And those who refuse to believe it are simply burying their heads in the sand.”

Kerry went a step further with his assaults on climate change deniers, likening them to members of the Flat Earth Society, adding that “we should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists and science and extreme ideologues to compete with scientific fact.”

“And let there be no doubt in anybody’s mind that the science is absolutely certain,” said Kerry. “It’s something that we understand with absolute assurance of the veracity of that science.”

Live Cam w/reporter: “Kerry’s speech took on an alarming tone regarding Indonesia, which he called “one of the most vulnerable countries on Earth. Listen in.”john-kerry-indonesia

Video: “But I wanted to start right here, in Jakarta, because this city – this country – this region – is really on the front lines of climate change,” said Kerry. “It’s not an exaggeration to say to you that the entire way of life that you live and love is at risk.”

Live Cam w/reporter: “Back to you, Mary.”

News Anchor: “Thanks Patsy. After the break, an eyewitness account of one man calming the seas.

…

News Anchor: “Welcome back.  We turn now to a Juxtaposed! News exclusive: an eyewitness account of rising seas calmed by…we are ready to go to Shirley Goodness at the Sea of Galilee.

JesusCalmsSea1Live Cam w/reporter: “Thanks Mary.  I am by the Sea of Galilee waiting for Simon Peter.  Hold on he’s coming now.  Simon…catch your breath first.  Now Simon tell us what happened out there.

Simon Peter: “Yeah, well, I have this fishing business called UTrawl. Get the camera over here. My boat, she is a beauty!

Live Cam w/reporter: “Simon, can you tell our audience what happened last night?”

Simon Peter: “Sure, I…just wanted to…well, what happened was that we, I mean me and my buddies, spent the day listening to Jesus talk about his kingdom.  Jesus would say stuff like, “This is what God’s kingdom was like,” and then he would go on and tell a …what did you call it John, a meta..?”

John: (Leaning in to the camera) “A metaphor.”

Simon Peter: “That’s John. Can they see my boat?”

Live Cam w/reporter: “Yes Simon, what happened last night?”

Simon Peter: “Well, in the evening we were all kind of tired and Jesus said, “Let’s get in your boat, Peter,” -that’s the one right over there – and let’s go to the other side. Jesus was exhausted so he lay down on a boat cushion and fell asleep.

While he was sleeping me and the guys talked about what he had said that day.  You know, we never heard anyone talk like that before. I’ve heard a lot of fish tales in my time but this guy – I think he wrote the book about truth.

Anyway, I love being on the water at night, the air is so clean and my boat glides along in the breeze.  But then last night, Whew! a big windstorm came up just like that! Bam!  The waves were breaking in on us and my boat quickly began to fill with water. Jesus was sleeping so soundly that he didn’t notice the water soaking his clothes.  We finally woke him up. We were…they were…a little frightened. You know, the others were going, “Teacher, we’re going to drown Don’t you care?” I just let them.”

Live Cam w/reporter: “Simon, weren’t you scared that you would lose everything, your business?

Simon: “I was scared for my business, of course.  But, I’ve seen so many storms in my time.  This storm, this one, this one was a doozy! I was starting to have a Jonah moment.”

Live Cam w/reporter: “What’s a Jonah moment?”

Simon: “A Jonah moment?  I’m sure your viewers have heard about the prophet Jonah.  No?  Well, Jonah is on a boat and a storm comes up and the crew are praying to God for mercy.  They want to throw “Jonah the jinx” overboard to settle with God.  So Jonah is thrown overboard and the seas calm down just like that. Snap!”

Live Cam w/reporter: “Did they throw you overboard last night?”

Simon: “NO!  But I saw them looking at me so I got Jesus up. And after Jesus got up, he rubbed his eyes and then looked at the storm and shouted, “Silence! Shut up!” Now, I have said some choice words to the weather in my time but what happened next…the wind died down just like that!  Bam! And there was flat calm. What happened was no meta…

John: (Leaning in to the camera) “Metaphor.”

Simon: “Yes, John, move back so they can see my boat.  Then Jesus turns to us and says, “Why are you scared? Don’t you believe yet? I think Jesus was calling us “deniers.”

I heard the other guys talking.  They were saying stuff like, “Who is this?” and “Even the wind and the sea do what he says!”JesusCalmsSea

Live Cam w/reporter: “Wow!  That is amazing! You must be happy to be alive!”

Simon: “I know the guys are. I am just happy that my baby didn’t sink in that storm.”

Live Cam w/reporter: “Anything you want to say before we go, Simon?”

Simon: “You don’t see this kind of thing every day but I saw this with my own eyes. Maybe someday I’ll … John is calling what happened a “sign.”  I call it “all in a day’s work for …what did Jesus call us John?”

John: (Leaning in to the camera) “Fishers of men.”

Live Cam w/reporter: “Back to you Mary.”

News Anchor: “Thanks Shirley. When we return we’ll hear about the possibility of Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the DOJ pursuing civil action against so-called climate change deniers.”

 

………………..

Here are Your Juxtaposed! News™ Top Stories:

 

Obama Spent Money on Climate Change Over Zika Emergency

Obama Raided $500M for Zika to Finance UN’s Green Climate Fund

John Kerry Mocks Climate Change Deniers

Jonah 1:15

Matthew 8:23-27

Mark 4:35-41

AG Lynch: DOJ Has Discussed Whether to Pursue Civil Action Against Climate Change Deniers

 

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