Wayward Christian Empathy

October 12, 2025 Leave a comment

Want to see what Christian empathy tends to look like?

No. This pop-project isn’t satire. The Church of England, so obsessed with its moral performance, really did cover the interior of the oldest cathedral in England in graffiti in order to represent themselves to the world.

As reported by The Independent,

The installation created by poet Alex Vellis is designed to contrast with the ancient, traditional architecture in the church to offer new interpretations of faith and worship. 

Per the partnered gay priest and dean of Canterbury, David Monteith, “There is a rawness which is magnified by the graffiti style, which is disruptive. There is also an authenticity in what is said because it is unfiltered and not tidied up or sanitised. Above all, this graffiti makes me wonder why I am not always able to be as candid, not least in my prayers.

“This exhibition intentionally builds bridges between cultures, styles and genres and, in particular, allows us to receive the gifts of younger people who have much to say and from whom we need to hear much.”

“Mr Vellis said the language of the graffiti was “of the unheard”.

He added: “By temporarily graffitiing the inside of Canterbury Cathedral, we join a chorus of the forgotten, the lost, and the wondrous. People who wanted to make their mark, to say ‘I was here’, and to have their etchings carry their voice through the centuries.”

Reading the motivation behind the Church of England’s self-vandalizing approach to empathy, one has to wonder, as with many decisions made in our times, – where are the adults? And what is next on the empathy checklist? Will the CoE leaders, in order build “bridges between cultures, styles and genres” and to “welcome the stranger,” get tattoos and piercings? Hand out drugs and needles? Perform a satanic mass?

The understanding, resonating, and self-differentiating human voices of previous centuries are becoming the “chorus of the forgotten, the lost, and the wondrous,” the voices “of the unheard” in the Church of England, throughout Europe, and the U.S. Those voices are deemed non-empathetic and must be shouted over with graffiti.

Those who, with ancient wisdom, made their mark of truth, beauty, and goodness, must now be overwritten with graffiti.

The desire to look like the world, like walking in another’s shoes, as inclusive and pluralistic, is beneficial for the state and its open borders immigration policies which deface homelands and cultures with graffiti.

Per Olivia Murray at American Thinker,

“Canterbury Cathedral, a sixth-century English church—making it more than 1,400 years old—has gotten a paint job…in graffiti. And as it turns out, this act of vandalism wasn’t an act of street delinquency, it was actually commissioned by the church’s stewards. . ..”

“Call me crazy, but this seems counterproductive. Real Englanders, Brits by blood and spirit, with an undying love for their culture and home, are beyond fed up with what the Dean of Canterbury calls “marginalized communities.” These “marginalized communities” are parasitic, they’re destroying the cohesion of England and the nation’s society, and they’re given preferential treatment by the government, that’s ostensibly, representing the English people.”

Murray continues:

“Progressives really have an extraordinary ability to turn something unbelievably precious and beautiful into utter trash—how can you make Canterbury Cathedral look like a derelict warehouse in an inner city, or resemble a dirty freight train car?”

~~~

Christian empathy tends to be wayward, moving away from truth, beauty and goodness and toward a seamless identity with what those in the world think they need and want – a trait that Jesus never had.

Christian empathy tends toward a desire to be seen as acceptable to the world so that the world would, by virtue of such, respond – a trait that Jesus never had.

As we read the hymn in Philippians 2, we learn that Jesus made himself accessible to the world.

As we read in gospel according to John 2:13-25, we learn of his distinctiveness from the world, from what those in the world thought they needed and wanted.

When the Court of the Gentiles within the temple ground, the place designated for believing Gentiles to pray and worship became cluttered with the clink of coins, the braying of animals, and the sounds of commerce, Jesus, “Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.

Note in the above accounts of the desecration of the cathedral, the SJW go-to descriptor ‘marginalised communities’. This indicates the current naming convention that paints humans in the Marxist graffiti of “oppressed” and “oppressor” while avoiding terms that speak of repentance and redemption.

~~~

It is easy to snicker in utter disgust at the perversion of an ancient cathedral, but what are Christians doing with what they have been given? Are Christians preserving the good, the true, the beautiful that has been passed down? Are Christians adding or subtracting to what we’ve been given. Are Christians looking at screens all day?

Should Christians continue to build churches that look like commercial buildings? It seems that after the reformation, Protestants decided that beauty wasn’t utilitarian so why bother with it.

Are we composing music that goes beyond the folksy and often cloying church worship music? Are we writing operas, symphonies, fugues, sonatas? Hymns with actual embedded theology?

Are we creating works of art and literature that draw people to them or are we on screens and social media all day looking at and posting pictures? Early Christian art showed the immanence of God—his closeness to us—and his transcendence, his otherness. The Chosen is not art. It is redux sentimentality akin to watching a rerun of a Billy Grahm crusade or using crayons to color a Jesus picture.

Are we writing poetry that examines life – the wounding, the good, the true and the beautiful? Or, is that the purpose of MSM? Knowing God involves both spiritual and sensory engagement. Poetry can express both.

None of the above prompts are utilitarian and instantly beneficial. Hence, some will avoid a second thought about them.

From stained glass to straining for attention, the graffiti installation recognizes the ego in rebellion to the good, the true and the beautiful while virtue signaling empathy. Not only is the installation profane, it is an act of profound laziness. Evil is lazy and does not promote the spiritual growth of another.

The church of England, the dancing daughter of Herodias, offers its beguiling movements to please guests and the reigning authority. This while John the Baptist, who called people from all strata of society including King Herod to repentance, sits tied up in jail, his head to be removed with the axe of “Silence!”

Want to see what Christian empathy tends to look like?

The Brave New World’s Arch-Community Songster of Canterbury

There is an intense irony here that gets to the heart of the self-inflicted problems of the Church of England today. Sarah Mullally has been very clear on the kind of Church she believes in – she’s a supporter of LGBTQ+ rights and activism, she has strongly backed asylum and migration, she is a self-declared feminist, and she is both politically and it seems religiously progressive. As Bishop of London, she boasted about representing a diverse and multicultural city, and put her experience in handling diversity as one of the key qualifications and evidence of positive experience she could bring to being the Archbishop of Canterbury. (Emphasis mine.)

“The Church of England has lost 80 per cent of Anglicans on the planet” « Quotulatiousness

Added 10-18-2025:

Helen Andrews | Overcoming the Feminization of Culture | NatCon 5

Helen [Andrews] argues that the rise of “wokeness” wasn’t born from Marxism, academia, or even Obama-era politics. That in itself had people shocked. Helen theorizes that it actually came from something way simpler… the quiet but steady feminization of America’s most powerful institutions.

Somebody finally figured out how ‘wokeism’ started – and no, it wasn’t Obama or Marxism… – Revolver News

Helen Andrews wrote in The Great Feminization | Compact

“Wokeness is not a new ideology, an outgrowth of Marxism, or a result of post-Obama disillusionment. It is simply feminine patterns of behavior applied to institutions where women were few in number until recently . . .

Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition . . .

“The threat posed by wokeness can be large or small depending on the industry . . . The field that frightens me most is the law. All of us depend on a functioning legal system, and, to be blunt, the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female. The rule of law is not just about writing rules down. It means following them even when they yield an outcome that tugs at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense of which party is more sympathetic. 

“The problem is not that women are less talented than men or even that female modes of interaction are inferior in any objective sense. The problem is that female modes of interaction are not well suited to accomplishing the goals of many major institutions.”

~~~~~

“THE EIGHT PRINCIPLES OF UNCIVILISATION

1. We live in a time of social, economic and ecological unravelling. All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history. We will face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it.

2. We reject the faith which holds that the converging crises of our times can be reduced to a set of ‘problems’ in need of technological or political ‘solutions’.

3. We believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves. We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilisation: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature’. These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten they are myths.

4. We will reassert the role of storytelling as more than mere entertainment. It is through stories that we weave reality.

5. Humans are not the point and purpose of the planet. Our art will begin with the attempt to step outside the human bubble. By careful attention, we will reengage with the non-human world.

6. We will celebrate writing and art which is grounded in a sense of place and of time. Our literature has been dominated for too long by those who inhabit the cosmopolitan citadels.

7. We will not lose ourselves in the elaboration of theories or ideologies. Our words will be elemental. We write with dirt under our fingernails.

8. The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop. Together, we will find the hope beyond hope, the paths which lead to the unknown world ahead of us.”
― Paul Kingsnorth, Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto

Why I’m Taking Music & Art Lessons – Margarita Mooney Clayton

The Satisfaction of Making Art – Margarita Mooney Clayton

~~~~~

From St. Augustine’s Confessions (Book 10, Chapter 27). St. Augustine reflects back on his own conversion from a life of profligacy to one of love and intimacy with God.

Chapter XXVII.-He Grieves that He Was So Long Without God.

Too late did I love Thee, O Fairness, so ancient, and yet so new! Too late did I love Thee For behold, Thou wert within, and I without, and there did I seek Thee; I, unlovely, rushed heedlessly among the things of beauty Thou madest. Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee. Those things kept me far from Thee, which, unless they were in Thee, were not. Thou calledst, and criedst aloud, and forcedst open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and chase away my blindness. Thou didst exhale odours, and I drew in my breath and do pant after Thee. I tasted, and do hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for Thy peace.

https://orthodoxchurchfathers.com/fathers/npnf101/npnf1027.html#P1660_683954

~~~~~

The Ghent Altarpiece (Adoration of the Mystic Lamb) (1432) by Jan van Eyck

Filed under 2025 Current Events, Anglicaism, Christianity, Immigration Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Fortitude is The Way’s Forward

September 13, 2025 Leave a comment

About that time there occurred no small disturbance concerning the Way. Acts 19.23

Charlie Kirk – devoted husband, father, and follower of Jesus – was assassinated. Churches must speak of his faithful, courageous outspoken Christian witness and of his martyrdom.

Yet, there will be Christians and churches that will balk at any mention of Charlie Kirk, intimidated by the same silencing forces behind the assassination. They will remain silent while evil celebrates.

From Bluesky To Reddit, Democrats Celebrate Charlie Kirk’s Assassination; Trump Slams Radical Left  | ZeroHedge

There are church leaders who will not talk about Charlie the man. Rather, they will talk about coming together as a people. “Aren’t we supposed to be one?” “Politics divide us.” So, they tiptoe around evil afraid to name it and who is doing it, afraid of division in the ranks and a possible loss of the ministry they created.

But this is not a time for cowering and equivocating. This is not the time to play to Karens, to those who clutch pearls, to those with delicate sensibilities who cluck in disgust at anything they don’t approve of.

This is not a PBS kumbaya moment. This is a time to see what you see, name it, and to gird up your loins to do battle with the reality of evil and that requires naming it.

This is a come to your senses moment. Charlie Kirk was assassinated for speaking the gospel of Jesus Christ. This was not a tragedy, a happenstance, just another act of violence. This was a deliberate act of evil against Charlie, the Church, the Lord and his kingdom on earth.

 Jesus spoke of the evil intentions within the human heart. Those included murder. And the Apostle Paul wrote of the outward characteristics of those who defile themselves with evil intentions (2 Tim. 3):

“You need to know this: bad times are coming in the last days. People will be in love with themselves, you see, and with money too. They will be boastful, arrogant, abusive, haters of parents, ungrateful, unholy, unfeeling, implacable, accusing, dissolute, savage, haters of the good, traitors, reckless, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding a pattern of godliness but denying its power. Avoid people like that!”

If you need evidence of the above, go on social media.

Many church leaders do not understand that the church is both a ministry of reconciliation and a ministry of the sword and division. Jesus came to reconcile the world to himself, not by generating political peace for a particle group (the Jews) but with a sword that separated truth and error, light and darkness, good and evil (Matt. 10:34).

The ministry of the sword says “Avoid people like that!” The ministry of the sword says that there will be The Great Divorce based on the choices we make.

Unlike the world, with its message of looking for deliverance down and in where evil intentions lie, the ministry of reconciliation is about putting lives and the world to right by looking up and out beyond ourselves for our salvation. And so, the ministry of reconciliation entails reckoning with what Paul said to Timothy: “all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”

Jesus’ ministry was one of public and private dialog. Hearing his discourse, some became followers of The Way. They accepted that Jesus was the Way to the Father and the Truth about God, the world and themselves, and the Life that death could not extinguish. And some walked away to become followers of their own dark and vain imaginations.

Charlie Kirk, like Jesus, pursued truth in the public square. And like the Apostle Paul in a public square in Ephesus, he persuaded and drew away a considerable number of people by saying that gods made with hands are not gods. This was bad for local business (Hence, the epigraph. See Acts 19.)

 Some accepted Charlie’s words and joined in the pursuit of truth. Others mocked and protested him and continue to do so after his assassination. Like with Jesus, we see again how much the darkness hates the light and wants to extinguish it (Jn. 3: 19-21).

There are those who think they know Charlie via the main stream media. I’ve heard Christians justify their disdain of Charlie and what he stood for with their moral authority. Clearly invested in their tribal reputation, I heard them spout chapter and verse of their righteous indignation in podcasts and in articles. They say, in effect, “We want nothing to do with him and his ilk.”

But the man’s public life was there for all to see. He aligned it with his understanding of the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He refused to call darkness light or exchange reality for comforting illusions. He refused to serve lies, like so many Christians. Charlie was not intimidated by the darkness. He had fortitude. That was his way forward and that is The Way’s forward.

The Lord detests the way of the wicked,
    but he loves those who pursue righteousness. Prov. 15:9

~~~~~

Charlie Kirk’s Witness to a Pagan Shows What Separated Him From Most Other Conservative Leaders

Links:

On the left-wing social media app Bluesky, the assassination of Charlie Kirk is being celebrated like a national holiday. The entire site reads like a grotesque party, with users cheering, laughing, and even dancing over the murder of a young husband and father, shot down for the simple crime of thinking differently.

And it doesn’t stop there. The mob on Bluesky is now taking it even further by openly naming other conservatives they want to see assassinated next. Like this is some kind of “Hunger Games” to them.

Go to this link to see screen captures of who they want killed:

Calls to ‘haul’ Bluesky CEO before Congress grow LOUDER… – Revolver News

https://twitter.com/babybeginner/status/1966064272552906996/photo/1

House Dems shout ‘No!’ when Boebert requests spoken prayer for Charlie Kirk

Pawn Star demands action for Charlie, people are very angry. (Language)

“I support Charlie Kirk’s killer. He did us a favor, I would have killed him myself”

Tens of thousands #WalkAway after seeing celebrations of Charlie Kirk’s assassination…

Watch Live: Tyler Robinson, 22, Named As Suspect In Charlie Kirk Assassination | ZeroHedge

~~~~~

Mozart

Introitus
Requiem aeternam dona ets, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat ets.
Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion,
et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem.
Exaudi orationem meam,
ad te omnis caro veniet.
Requiem aeternam dona ets, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat ets.

Entrance
Grant them eternal rest, O Lord,
and may perpetual light shine on them.
Thou, O God, art praised in Sion,
and unto Thee shall the vow
be performed in Jerusalem.
Hear my prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come.
Grant them eternal rest, O Lord,
and may perpetual light shine on them.

Filed under 2025 Current Events, Christianity, Culture, Political Commentary, Politics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Lip Service

September 1, 2025 Leave a comment

The Observant Observer

Is Israel’s Restoration Project Under Attack?

Tevye Lev, Opinion

Gennesaret. The Pharisees, together with legal experts from Jerusalem, were on the scene to investigate Jesus when they witnessed some of his followers eating with unwashed hands – a brazen breach of a long-held practice of ceremonial washings and ritual purity rules.

The Pharisees, as do all Jews, never eat without first washing their hands. This is to maintain the tradition of the elders, who when they come from the marketplace, never eat without first washing. There are other traditions too: the washing of cups, pot, and bronze dishes.

Known for strict Torah observance by way of oral tradition, the Pharisees consider that being ritually impure is to be morally impure. One rabbi described eating with unwashed hands as no different than lying with a harlot.

As our readers are aware, the Pharisees claim that the Law that God gave to Moses consisted of the written Law and the oral traditions of the Jewish people, the oral law being an interpretation of the Torah according to what they believe to be the spirit of the Law. It consists of a collective body of ordinances that have evolved from the Law to regulate religious observances and the daily life and conduct of the Jewish people. 

Ritual hand washing is seen as an extension of Moses’ directive to Aaron and his sons for them to wash their hands and feet prior to entering the Tabernacle.

A legal expert described the ritual before partaking of a meal: “First you wash your hands to make them clean, and then perform the ritual to make them spiritually clean. You recite a prayer during the ritual washing: ‘Blessed be Thou, O Lord, King of the universe, who sanctified us by the laws and commanded us to wash the hands.’”

 As part of a renewal movement, the Pharisees are working to purify Israel from worldly influence and bring about the conditions for the national restoration of Israel based on the near-at-hand expectations of the prophets.

They instituted synagogues so we could gather locally and not have to travel to the temple and be under literal Torah observance. At the same time, they insist on the binding force of oral tradition and show no mercy towards those that subvert those customs. When Jesus’ followers didn’t wash their hands before eating, they became immediately suspect of breaking oral tradition.

Word here in Jerusalem is that Jesus has been on a whirlwind tour throughout Galilee proclaiming the “good news of the arrival of the kingdom of God.” Religious leaders have taken note and are concerned about anyone claiming to be the revolutionary, as others had failed and have made things worse for the Jews. Pharisees and legal experts went to Gennesaret to look into Jesus.

The Pharisees-from an etching by Friedrich Ludy

When confronted about his disciple’s blatant break with the tradition of the elders (not washing their hands before eating), Jesus clearly took issue with what he considers to be progressive revisionist practices that generate spiritual pretenders. He quoted the words of the prophet Isaiah:

These people make a big show of saying the right thing,
    but their heart isn’t in it.
They act like they’re worshiping me,
    but they don’t mean it.
They just use me as a cover
    for teaching whatever suits their fancy.”

He went on to state that the Pharisees were setting aside God’s commands to preserve human tradition. He provided an example, focusing on what he considered to be another application of their revisionist interpretation of the Law with their use of Korban – something to be offered to God or given to the sacred treasury in the temple.

He began by quoting Moses: “Honor your father and mother” and “Anyone who slanders father and mother should die.”

Jesus contended with the Pharisee’s practice of telling people that in lieu of giving to their parents they could redirect their gift by calling it “Korban,” thereby leaving their parents without the help they need. He seems to be implying that instead of honoring parents and thereby God as the Law would have it, this practice is actually an insult to both.

He went on to say that the result of this revisionist interpretation of the Law that they zealously promote and enforce, and others like it, is to nullify God’s word.

It is reported that Jesus then called the crowd together and said this:

“Listen to me, all of you, and get this straight! What goes into someone from outside does not make them unclean. What makes someone unclean is what comes out of them.”

Is Jesus doing away with ritual purity or is he suggesting something else?

Are the Pharisees hypocrites when they show their piety and devotion to God with hand washing?

Is Jesus undermining the Pharisee’s Israel restoration project that is attempting to force into effect an end of history kingdom of God that they approve of?

Here in Jerusalem, the Pharisees are forming councils to censor and block any attempts to circumvent their restoration agenda which includes oral tradition.

(The above is based on the gospel of Mark 7: 1-23.)

~~~~~

Here’s an inciteful take on Deuteronomy that will revise what you thought you knew.

The Gospel According to Moses

For the renowned scholar, Dr. Daniel Block, Deuteronomy is the “Gospel according to Moses.” Moses’ farewell pastoral addresses call God’s people to remember his grace in salvation, covenant relationship with him, and his revelation of a way of blessing in a lost world.

Daniel I. Block, “The Gospel According to Moses: A Commentary on Deuteronomy”

Daniel I. Block, “The Gospel According to Moses: A Commentary on Deuteronomy” (Inspirata Publishing, 2023) – New Books Network

Remaining Podcasts here:

Daniel I. Block, “Hearing the Gospel According to Moses Volume 2: Chapters 12-23” (Inspirata, 2024) – New Books Network

Daniel I. Block, “Hearing the Gospel According to Moses: Chapters 24-34” (Inspirata, 2024) – New Books Network

~~~~~

Here’s an excellent April 3, 2025 PBS/Frontline documentary of things you won’t hear from MSM including CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. Put away political animus to gain insight. (Some coarse language.)

Trump’s Power & the Rule of Law: Steve Bannon (interview) | FRONTLINE

~~~~~

Osvaldo Golijov’s “Tenebrae”: Melismatic Echoes of Couperin

In Western Christianity, Tenebrae occurs in the final days of the Holy Week, and commemorates the sufferings and death of Christ. It involves the gradual extinguishing of candles, leading to a void of darkness.

Metaphorical darkness, light, and space formed the inspiration for Tenebrae, a 2002 chamber work by Argentine composer, Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960).

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, 1885 – 1886 – John Singer Sargent

Filed under Christianity, Gospel of Mark, The Gospel of Mark Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Snakes Alive!

May 11, 2025 Leave a comment

A countryman returning home one winter’s day found a snake by the hedge-side, half dead with cold. Taking compassion on the creature, he laid it in his bosom and brought it home to his fireside to revive it. No sooner had the warmth restored it, than it began to attack the children of the cottage. Upon this the countryman, whose compassion had saved its life, took up a club and laid the snake dead at his feet.

Aesop’s The Countryman and The Snake

~~~~~

The foolish take pity on snakes. Thinking to help creatures out in the cold cruel world, they bring them home and the creature’s true nature is revealed. Suffering follows.

The foolish do not take care to bestow their benevolence upon proper objects. And so, not having yet been bitten, the foolish continue to empathize with snakes.

Snakes on the Brain

The foolish take pity on and work to bring home MS-13 gang members, wife abusers, and human traffickers e.g., Abrego Garcia.

The foolish bring home a false premise of multiculturalism believing that all cultures are equal in some undefinable sense.

The foolish bring home DEI creatures and their true nature is revealed in the sorry outcomes.

The foolish bring home, with ad-hoc justice and zero-bail policies, criminals who are not fit to live in a community. Repeat offenders reveal their true nature.

The foolish take pity on unvetted (legally and health wise) invaders and bring them home by creating “sanctuary cities” and alerting them to the approach of the countryman, and by hiding them.

The foolish take home Hamas sympathizers and warm them by the fires of Marxist/critical theory/anticolonialism ‘higher education’. Thus embraced, their true nature is revealed. Their “freedom of expression” is to bite those empathizing with them.

The foolish take pity on invaders and rally behind rogue district court judges appointed by Biden and Obama who act unconstitutionally to block deportation of the invaders.

The foolish take pity on CCP snakes by letting them purchase U.S. farmland where they can breed.

The foolish take pity on and want to hold on to government programs of waste, fraud, and abuse that produce more snakes and snake bites, including “sex changes, LGBT activism, a “DEI musical,” a transgender opera, and birth control,” and terrorism, e.g., USAID.

I have known some as bad as the Snake.

Those with no sense will not only take a snake to their bosom, they will also take fire to their bosom, as Proverbs 6:27-35 tells us.

Disorder in the House

The foolish order their Mr. Rogers neighborly affections with Progressivism’s morally-relativistic calculus that breeds chaos, injustice and societal harm.

In the current cultural milieu given to Marxist victim-oppressor ideology, taking pity on a snake, a lowly creature, can provide a feeling of dominance and power. It can also make the snake-pitier feel virtuous. Benevolence upon improper objects follows: take pity on snakes, say nothing of their bite, and virtue signal your empathy to the world.

It helps Progressive sensibilities that the deep state media doesn’t show the consequences of snake-pity and holds snake-pitiers innocent of any biting consequences and that social media “Likes” flow with snake-pity empathy, and there are handshakes after sermons that wrangle scripture to have it mean that bringing a snake home is a loving thing.

And why not. Doesn’t the Good Book tell us to love? Isn’t that the Jesus way? And isn’t that the Woodstock way e.g., “Love the one you’re with?” Isn’t that the abstract universalist platitude way, e.g., “All You Need is Love?” Isn’t that the sentimentalist way, e.g., “love is love?” Isn’t that the social justice way, e.g., “Love is picking winners and losers?”

Prudent people bestow their benevolence upon proper objects. Prudent people focus on ordering their loves and not on joining fools who take snakes to their bosom. Here, I address the latter group, Progressive Christians who misplace empathy and disorder their love.

Empathy that cedes wisdom and objective reality for acts of trendy “social justice”, love so disordered will come back to bite them and the ones they love and those who go on to live with the consequences of their ‘empathy’!

Should we prioritize the foreigner above our family, our community, and our church? Isn’t the well-being of those closest to us more important than the migrant pursuing opportunism by crossing the border illegally? (Many illegals wave the flag of the country they left behind.)

Oh, I forgot. Many SJWs ‘exist’ on social media and in pulpits but don’t live in the communities affected. Snake bites – the raping and killing and stealing and fentanyl deaths and the zapping of community resources – Deep State Media doesn’t mention consequences of snake pity. Instead, Deep State Media is focused on vilifying snake deportations. (No pearl-clutching, please.)

A state government using taxpayer dollars to pay for housing, medical, legal and other expenses for the invaders is not on your radar – yet. Empathy that results in rape, murder, harm, and loss to your family, your community, your church, and your country – that snake hasn’t bitten you yet.

The Progressive snake preys on the naïve, on the sentimental, on those lacking wisdom and discernment. Figures in Christianity have brought home that snake and its dangerous nature. The result: moral relativity; prioritizing political correctness over truth; prioritizing the foreign over the familiar, the stranger over kin; abstract humanitarianism over the concrete needs of one’s community; disordered ordo amoris.

Disordered love is the basis of much confusion and chaos and corruption today. Disordered love can result in political disarray, protests, cultural demise, and a moral relativity that abstracts reality to gain social credit.

The breakdown of ordo amoris (order of love) explains benevolence upon improper objects It explains bringing home a snake. You cannot claim to love “the world” if you harm those closest to you in the process. And closing one’s eyes to the consequences of mis-placed empathy isn’t loving.

Order in the House

Imagine you are invited to a symphony orchestra concert. The program features atonal music.

 The music lacks a tonal center or key. It sounds off, as it does not conform to the ordered system of tonal hierarchies and harmonious structures that characterize classical music.

The vagueness and generality of the sound is annoying. Dissonant and jarring, it is characterized by disorder – pitches in new combinations and familiar pitch combinations in unfamiliar settings.

By the end of the first movement, you’ve heard enough and walk out.

~~~

The new pope Leo XIV, the first Augustinian Pope, criticized J.D. Vance’s views on the Catholic teachings on caring for others, as well as President Trump’s immigration policies.

This past February, then-Cardinal Prevost challenged Vice President JD Vance on X, repeating a headline from The National Catholic Reporter: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

I find such criticism rather strange and out of touch with the Order of St. Augustine that Prevost joined in 1977. The criticism sounds like Progressive politics that appropriates Jesus because it has no moral authority its own.

St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas said that love must be ordered. One must love God first, then family, then nation. (The following summaries are from The Order of Love by Sean Ring. Document below.)

Augustine’s hierarchy of love can be summarized as:

God above all – The highest love is due to God, as He is the source of all good.

Self properly ordered – We must love ourselves rightly, seeking salvation and holiness rather than selfish pleasure.

Family and kin – Natural obligations to parents, spouses, and children take precedence over others.

Community and nation – A just love of one’s people and homeland follows from natural bonds.

Strangers and humanity at large – Charity extends to all, but not at the expense of higher obligations.

St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica says that love should be given according to moral proximity, explaining that natural law thru justice and governance dictates a preference for those closest to us:

We owe special care to our families because they are an extension of ourselves.

The common good of a nation is more relevant than abstract global concerns.

Charity is universal, but obligations are graded, meaning the duty to kin and community is stronger than to distant strangers.

Ordo Amoris

Put God first – Moral order flows from divine truth.

Prioritize family and community – Nations and families are not arbitrary constructs but natural hierarchies of love.

Exercise prudent charity – Helping others should not come at the expense of justice or the destruction of one’s people.

Reject false universalism – Love for all does not mean an equal obligation to all.

The Order of Love – The Daily ReckoningDownload

~~~~

Today’s education system is focused on a Marxist victim-oppressor ordering.

Christian education should focus on Ordo Amoris, the order of affections. Children must be taught the order of priorities: what is most important and what is least important. This isn’t to say a given item is bad, but that it’s not as high in our affection (or priority list) as something else.

Teaching that involves such wisdom and discernment would be a guide to relationships and moral obligations and a protection against the modern sentimentality that distorts true love.

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man:

“St Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought. When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has been thus trained in ‘ordinate affections’ or ‘just sentiments’ will easily find the first principles in Ethics; but to the corrupt man they will never be visible at all and he can make no progress in that science. Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful.”

The apostle Paul: “So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all and especially for those of the family of faith.” Gal. 6:10

Charity begins at home. Societies thrive when love is ordered correctly. ​ But fools bring snakes home.

In pity he brought the poor Snake
To be warmed at his fire. A mistake!
For the ungrateful thing
Wife & children would sting.
I have known some as bad as the Snake.

Aesop’s The Farmer and The Snake

The apostle Paul: “So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all and especially for those of the family of faith.” Gal. 6:10

~~~~~

The Budget Savvy Travelers@thebstravelers

A Danish man—just a regular guy—gets confronted in his own country by a group of migrants who flat-out tell him: “This isn’t Denmark anymore. We’re taking over.”

That’s not integration or assimilation. That’s demographic conquest. These aren’t whispers in the back alleys—these are bold, open declarations: “We have 5 children, you have 1. In ten years, you’ll be gone.”

You’re not going to hear this story on CNN, MSNBC, or from the latte-sipping globalists at the UN—but this is what’s REALLY going on in Denmark right now.

While the mainstream media distracts you with puff pieces about Trump trying to “buy Greenland”—like that’s some kind of planetary emergency—the REAL crisis is happening on the streets of Europe. The globalist experiment is unraveling, and the social engineers want you asleep at the wheel.

Let me break this down for you—this is not immigration, this is replacement. It’s part of a globalist plan, and they’ve been cooking this up for decades: flood sovereign nations with unvetted mass migration, break down cultural identity, dilute national pride, and then centralize power in unelected bureaucracies like the EU and the World Economic Forum.

And yet—what’s the big scandal on the evening news? “Trump wanted to buy Greenland!” Give me a break! That’s not a scandal, that’s strategic resource acquisition! But they don’t want you thinking strategically. They want you guilty, distracted, docile, and outbred.

This is a warning. This is a five-alarm fire for Western civilization, and they’re telling you it’s a candle flickering in the wind. Denmark is the canary in the coal mine. What happens there will echo across Europe and the West if people don’t wake up, reclaim their identity, protect their borders, and stand up for truth, sovereignty, and survival.

WAKE UP, BEFORE YOU’RE ERASED.

~~~~~

Why, in a land that prides itself on welcoming migrants, are so many gang members from migrant communities? And is it Swedish society that is the ultimate culprit, or the migrant communities themselves?

How Sweden’s multicultural dream went fatally wrong

~~~~~

Added 5-14-2025:

THE MATT GAETZ SHOW EXCLUSIVE: FIRST LOOK INSIDE CECOT’S TREN DE ARAGUA WARD

~~~~~~

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

At The Still Point

April 18, 2025 Leave a comment

Scientific, philosophical, and theological inquiries have their limits. Each pursuit provides head knowledge, but the interior life requires more – to understand with the heart spiritual reality beyond the habitual binary thinking that feels safe but limits our ability to see the truth of things in the wholeness of reality.

The continual practice of prayerful contemplation at a still point will support the interior life. A passionate pursuit of the Real will involve our imagination which is more important than knowledge. For, our imagination can take us on a journey beyond the pedantic to places of mystery, wonder, suffering, truth, and beauty.

Do you want a faith that sees beyond terrible reality? A faith that takes on a Giant named Despair[i]? Practice prayerful contemplation continually.

Poetry can help us contemplate the Passion of Christ – what I call, using T.S. Eliot’s words, “the still point of the turning world”[ii]

 The Agony by George Herbert invites us to a garden and then a cross to fathom the depths of sin and of love.

The Agony

Philosophers have measur’d mountains,
Fathom’d the depths of the seas, of states, and kings,
Walk’d with a staff to heav’n, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sin and Love.

Who would know Sin, let him repair
Unto mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skin, his garments bloody be.
Sin is that press and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruel food through ev’ry vein.

Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach, then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.

Crucifixion – Nicolai Ge

[i] The Pilgrim’s Progress: Part 1: Giant Despair and Doubting Castle

[ii]  “At the still point of the turning world, there the dance is… Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance, and there is only the dance.” – T. S. Eliot (Burnt Norton). https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/11/18/t-s-eliot-reads-burnt-norton/

~~~~~

A selection from the chapter Gethsemane, in the “The Lord” by Romano Guardini:

After saying these things, Jesus went forth with his disciples beyond the torrent of Cedron, where there was a garden…” (John 18:1) “According to his custom” adds Luke.

And they came to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, ‘Sit here, while I pray.’ And he took with him Peter James and John, and began to feel dread and to be exceedingly troubled. And he said to them, ‘My soul is sad, even unto death. Wait here and watch.’ . . .

Jesus’ consciousness of the world’s corruption is not grounded in the world and therefore the prisoner of existence. It springs from above, from God, and enfolds the whole globe, seeing as God sees: around existence, through existence, outwards from existence.  Moreover, Jesus’ divine consciousness, before which everything is stripped and lucid, is not extrinsic, but intrinsic, realized in his living self.  He knows with his human intellect, feels the world’s forlornness with his human heart. And, the sorrow of it, incapable of ripping the eternal God from his bliss, becomes in Christ’s human soul unutterable agony. From this knowledge comes a terrible and unrelenting earnestness, knowledge that underlies every word he speaks and everything he does. It pulses through his whole being and proclaims itself in the least detail of his fate. Here lies the root of Christ’s inapproachable loneliness. What human understanding and sympathy could possibly reach into this realm in which the Savior shoulders alone the yoke of the world? From this point of view Jesus was always a sufferer, and would have been one even if men had accepted his message of faith and love; even if salvation had been accomplished and the kingdom established alone by proclamation and acceptance, sparing him the bitter way of the cross. Even then, his whole life would have been inconceivably painful, for he would have been constantly aware of the world sin in the sight of a God he knew to be holy and all love; and he would have borne this terrible and inaccessible knowledge alone. In the hour of Gethsemane its ever-present pain swells to a paroxysm.

*****

Do you have Empathy for Real Victims? Or, has your “empathy” become toxic – aligned with the lawlessness and ‘anything goes’ morality of Progressivism? Are your loves disordered? Are lesser things loved above greater things (e.g., strangers over kin), leading to personal and societal decay?

The mother of Rachel Morin, the Maryland mom of five brutally raped and murdered by an illegal alien in August of 2023, on Wednesday joined a White House briefing to urge the media to share her daughter’s story.

“Tell the truth,” Patty Morin said. “Tell like how violent it really is.”

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Briefs Members of the Media with a Special Guest, Apr. 16, 2025

‘Tell the truth’: Mother of Maryland woman slain by illegal alien urges media to share her story

~~~

As Democrats work themselves into hysterics over Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a now-deported El Salvadoran man (aka, ‘Maryland Man’) at the center of an intense court battle, several new details about ‘St. Abrego’ have surfaced in the last several days – most recently that the Biden administration flagged him as a ‘suspect alien’ who was potentially involved in “human smuggling/trafficking” following a traffic stop hundreds of miles away from his Maryland home, according to DHS records reviewed by Just the News.

Human Trafficking Too? Biden Admin Flagged Deported El Salvadoran As ‘Suspect Alien’ | ZeroHedge

What deep state media (MSNBC, CNN, NYT, WaPo, The Atlantic, et al) won’t tell you:

Wife of Abrego Garcia in court documents — My husband beat me many times.

Violent restraining order filed against Garcia.

Filed under Christianity, Good Friday Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Days of Waiting, Watching, and Waning?

April 4, 2025 Leave a comment

We, a community of those who confess the lordship of Jesus Christ, met on the Lord’s Day to hear again about the Day of the Lord. For us and for Rome, religion and politics are one. Under Roman rule we live with conflicting sovereignties. We met to hear about the ruler of the kings of earth returning to put things right.

We are a house church in Ephesus, a major seaport and capital city in the Roman province of Asia. The city stands at the entrance of a valley that reaches far into the province with highways to other important cities in the region. As a major trade route, Ephesus connects east and west. It also connects travelers with gods and goddesses.

Our city is renowned for the Greek temple devoted to the goddess of fertility Artemis or Diana. Images of Diana, crafted by local artisans and sold in the market place, are a big business. Likenesses of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, are seen on coins, sculptures, and architectural reliefs, triumphal arches, and monuments. Nike or Victoria is important to the Roman military. She represents speed, strength, and victory – characteristics of Rome’s overwhelming force.

As I said, our city is governed by Rome. Symbols of Roman power are everywhere you turn: statues, iconography, rituals, festivals. Several cohorts of Roman soldiers are stationed here. Our city is a center for the imperial cult.

There are two temples in the city devoted to the worship of the emperor. Images of the emperor, declaring him to be the “son of god”, are on the coins we trade with. Citizens are obligated to pay homage and offer worship to the ‘divine’ emperor. We do not do this, as there is only one divine Lord and ruler of us all. This defiance puts us in constant tension with our overseers.

Our community in Ephesus began when the apostle Paul passed through on his way to Jerusalem. He left with us Aquila and Priscilla, a couple of Jewish tentmakers he worked with and taught in Corinth. They were to teach us the Way of Jesus. Paul promised to come back if he could.

While Paul was away, a Jew named Apollos came to Ephesus. He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. He spoke with great fervor about Jesus and began to speak boldly in the synagogue. He vigorously refuted his Jewish opponents in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah.

When Priscilla and Aquila heard Apollos speak, they learned that he only knew of the baptism of John. So, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.

When Paul returned, he asked if we had been baptized in the Holy Spirit. We said no. We hadn’t heard about the Holy Spirit. He then asked into what we were baptized. We told him John’s baptism. He explained that John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus. 

We were then baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Paul had laid his hands on us and the Holy Spirit came upon us. We spoke in tongues and prophesied.  Our hearts were filled with love, joy and peace. We shared the Way of Jesus with the Ephesians.

For three months, Paul preached in the synagogues. He spent three months speaking to the established Jewish community. But the Jews were not willing to accept gentiles into their church community. In spite of that resistance, over the next two years Paul baptized Hellenized Jews and gentile converts.

During his stay in Ephesus, Paul performed many miracles and exorcisms. Many in our city renounced their idolatrous ways. They rid themselves of images of Diana. This caused a riot with the craftsmen who made a steady profit from selling them.

The apostle later wrote a letter to our church. He wrote it from a prison in Rome, as Tychicus told us when he delivered the letter and read it to us.

Paul wrote about our redemption and prayed that we would see the hope that we were called to. God, he said, has made known to us the secret of his purpose just as he wanted to be. It was set it forward in Jesus as a blueprint for when the time was ripe. The plan was to sum up the whole cosmos in King Jesus – everything in heaven and earth.

Not long ago we received a letter from John the Elder. John had been a Jewish high priest” who had officiated in the Jerusalem temple early in his life. Because of his proximity to Jesus, John the Elder was an eyewitness of the events surrounding Jesus – his teaching, his miracles, his death, and his resurrection. John was at Jesus’ crucifixion and given charge over Mary. He eventually brought her with him to Ephesus.

In his pastoral letter for the churches in the province, John contrasted those born of the world and those born of the father, light versus darkness, truth versus falsehood, righteousness versus sin, love of the Father versus love of the world, and the Spirit of God versus the spirit of the antichrist

John warned us about antichrists in our community. He said to test the spirits to see if they are from God as many false prophets have gone out into the world. The test: “every spirit that agrees that Jesus the Messiah has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.” These last, he said, are the spirit of the antichrist. We heard that it was coming, and now it is in our midst.

~~~

As is our habit when we meet and share the Lord’s table, we sing psalms and listen to the teachings of Jesus from the elders. We reread pastoral letters sent to us. We hang on every word, as we are a small community surrounded by every kind of darkness.

We also hear the prophets read. As the Jewish believers have told us, the Day of the Lord that brings judgement on the tyrannical rulers and salvation from tyrannical rule has been in the hearts and minds of God’s people for hundreds of years.

And how could it not be when Joel the prophet wrote “Alas for that day! For the day of the Lord is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty.”

And Amos the prophet wrote “Woe to you who long for the day of the Lord! Why do you long for the day of the Lord? That day will be darkness, not light.”

And Isaiah the prophet wrote “Enter into the rock and hide in the dust from the terror of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty. The haughty eyes of people shall be brought low, and the pride of everyone shall be humbled; and the Lord alone will be exalted on that day.”

~~~

Recently, I, Dionysius, an elder in our church, received a long letter from the island of Patmos. It was written by John- not John the Elder but John the prophet. John is a common name. I introduced the letter to those gathered:

“This letter is sent from John, a brother and partner in our suffering. He received a message from He Who Is and Who Was and Who Is to Come – Jesus, the Messiah, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and ruler of the kings of the earth. It is addressed to the seven churches in Asia.

 “Here is the message to our church here in Ephesus:

“These are the words of the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand, and who walks in among the seven golden lampstands. I know what you have done, your hard labor and patience. I know that you cannot tolerate evil people, and that you have tested those who pass themselves off as apostles, but are not, and you have demonstrated them to be frauds. You have patience, and you have put up with a great deal because of my name, and you haven’t grown weary. I do, however, have one thing against you: you have abandoned the love you showed at the beginning. So remember the place from which you have fallen. Repent, and do the works you did at the beginning. If not – if you don’t repent – I will come and remove your lampstand out of its place. You do, though, have this in your favor: you hate what the Nicolaitans are doing, and I hate it too. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the spirit is saying to the churches. The tree of life stands in God’s paradise, and I will give to anyone who conquers the right to eat from it.”

This word affected us greatly. Our work and endurance of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ was recognized by him. We did as John the Elder said. We tested and then purged from our midst false prophets and antichrists. We took a stand against the Nicolaitans, idolatrous enemies of God.

But our love, born out of the love with which Christ first loved us and gave himself for us, had become a joyless sense of order. We were going through the motions, like those who worship idols. Over time, the truth worth dying for was not going out to the people Christ died for.

When Paul laid hands on us and we received the holy spirit, we were passionate about the love that brought us in, making us sons and daughters of God. We were passionate about sharing this love with the Ephesians.

I reminded everyone that the apostle Paul had ended his letter to us with “Grace be with all who love our Lord, King Jesus, with a love that never dies!”

Had our waiting and watching, and wanting a reckoning of those who claim ultimate power over us turned us inward and away from the love of Christ for the world?

We needed to reorient our hearts, minds, soul, desires, actions, and pursuits toward our first love, a love not defined by our circumstances but by the love that gave itself up for the world on the cross. If we don’t, our lampstand, our witness, will be removed and we will be like all the other religious practices around us.

As I continued to read the letter, Jewish believers in our community spoke of Daniel’s apocalypse and the coming of “one like the son of man.” Here, John wrote of “one like the son of man” standing in the middle of the seven lampstands and speaking to him.

The letter went on to reveal, as prophecy and apocalypse, a cosmic vision of “what soon must take place.”

With mythical imagery, things on earth – things well known to us – and things in heaven were interacting. What happened on earth affected things in heaven. What happened in heaven affected things on earth.

Imaginations took off as we recognized forces fighting against the true God and his kingdom on earth.

The dragon or serpent we understood as the primeval, supernatural source of all opposition to God. The beast or sea-monster was a deified Roman Emperor using military and political power for tyranny and economic exploitation. The second beast or earth-monster was the promoter of the imperial cult. It set up the image of the emperor to be worshipped and enforced its worship.

Babylon is the city of Rome exploiting the world for economic prosperity. The woman giving birth is Israel. The number of Nero’s name was 666.

The letter also provided counter-images to what we see daily in Ephesus.

God’s holiness is depicted with flashes of lightening, rumbling, peals of thunder, a violent earthquake, huge hailstones, and glory beyond all glory. There are scenes of a tree of life, a glassy sea, new creation, and the New Jerusalem.

Before the return of Christ and the final establishment of His eternal kingdom on earth, the long-prophesied Day of the Lord will bring judgements upon those -the living and the dead -who’ve turned away from God to worship the Beast.

With Seven seals, Seven trumpets, and Seven bowls, God’s wrath is revealed against all those in heaven and on earth who will not acknowledge him as the Sovereign God.  

The letter began with Seven golden lampstands. They are the seven churches in Asia – bearers of light in our dark world.

Our prophetic mission here in Ephesus is to witness to the Ephesians and to the world that passes through our city before the terrible Day of the Lord, before “what soon must take place.”

Our witness is to bring about repentance and the conversion of all nations to the worship of the true God. So, we must endure all hardship and persevere to give witness to the truth worth dying for with the same love with which Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. We must not turn inward.

~~~~~

Eternal Father, strong to save

Eternal Father, strong to save,
whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
its own appointed limits keep:
O hear us when we cry to thee
for those in peril on the sea.

O Christ, whose voice the waters heard
and hushed their raging at thy word,
who walkedst on the foaming deep,
and calm amid the storm didst sleep;
O hear us when we cry to thee
for those in peril on the sea.

Most Holy Spirit, who didst brood
upon the chaos dark and rude,
and bid its angry tumult cease,
and give, for wild confusion, peace:
O hear us when we cry to thee
for those in peril on the sea.

O Trinity of love and power,
our brethren shield in danger’s hour;
from rock and tempest, fire and foe,
protect them wheresoe’er they go;
thus evermore shall rise to thee
glad hymns of praise from land and sea.

~~~~~

Marxism, Socialism, and Communism: Cultural Marxism

On this episode of The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, Jeremiah and Juan discuss Communism’s transformation into a popular political position in the United States.

In “Marxism, Socialism, and Communism,” professors of history, politics, and economics look at Marx’s life and writings, the misery and brutality in the Soviet Union, the atrocities of communist China, and the proliferation of Cultural Marxism in America. They explore how many ideas animating American politics today are rooted in Marxism, and yet how they differ from Marx’s thought. By taking Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and the Frankfurt School seriously, we can see the injustice and evil inherent in all strands of Marxism. We also better understand the critiques of communism made by Mises, Hayek, and Solzhenitsyn. We are, therefore, better equipped to defeat it. 

Marxism, Socialism, and Communism: Solzhenitsyn, Mises, and Hayek

Marxism, Socialism, and Communism: Cultural Marxism – Hillsdale College Podcast Network

~~~~~

The Culture of Convenience and Comfort:

What has happened to our ability to sit in discomfort? What has happened to our stamina for life, especially life when it gets hard?

As an employer of more than 350 people over the past decade, I’ve seen a shift in the younger generation. Many don’t seem to know how to tolerate even mild discomfort. There’s a deep urge to escape anything that doesn’t feel good—whether through substances, screens, sugar, or distractions. And I can’t help but trace this trend back to childhood: when we hand kids a screen so we can finish dinner in peace, when we give them sugar to soothe a meltdown, when we teach them—without ever saying it out loud—that the goal is to feel good all the time.

We’ve created a culture that treats discomfort like a pathology. If something is hard, we assume it must be wrong. But that’s not how life works. 

Pain, struggle, and uncertainty are baked into the human experience. Maybe it’s not discomfort that’s the problem—but our inability to face it.

Yes, we should limit screen time. Yes, we should cut back on sugar. But more importantly, we need to stop teaching our children that discomfort is something to be avoided at all costs. It’s okay to be bored. It’s okay to be hot, or tired, or challenged. Just because something feels bad doesn’t mean it is bad. Most worthwhile things—motherhood, entrepreneurship, marriage, community, growth—will feel hard at some point. That’s not a flaw. That’s the path.

Are we raising a generation of escape artists, or are we raising people who can stay present through difficulty, learn from it, and grow?

The Epidemic Beneath The Surface: Disconnection, Discomfort, & The Death Of Resilience | ZeroHedge

~~~~~

Brain Rot: What Screens Are Doing to Our Minds (2)

In this second podcast Dr. Karyne Messina, a psychologist, psychoanalyst, author and NBN host discusses the problems the emerge when children watch screens and digital devices too much. Dr. Messina talked about this topic with Dr. Harry Gill, a well-known psychiatrist who also has a PhD. in neuroscience. In this episode the focus was on Erik Eriksson’s 5th stage of development, Industry versus Inferiority. They discussed one of the greatest difficulties they see in their young patients who contend with way too much screen time. 

Brain Rot: What Screens Are Doing to Our Minds (2)

Brain Rot: What Screens Are Doing to Our Minds (2) – New Books Network

~~~~~

The top picture reminds me of the playground I had as a kid:

Filed under apocalypse, Christianity, Ephesians, Revelation, Scripture Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

What’s At Stake

March 21, 2025 Leave a comment

One day, after leaving the temple in Jerusalem, Jesus told the disciples that the temple would be leveled. His disciples then came to him privately and asked “What is the sign of your coming and the end of the age?” The conversation is recorded here: Matt. 24:1-35.

Jesus tells them what to watch out for and to not be fooled by. He warns of the persecution and death of disciples who bear witness to the truth they had seen and heard. He speaks of those who fall away and of those whose love for the kingdom of God grows cold because of a milieu of wickedness. Then he adds “The ones who stand firm to the end will be saved.”

The end of the age will come, he tells them, when the gospel of the kingdom is preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations.

Jesus goes on to reveal signs and wonders of the end times. He can’t tell them the day or hour of his return, as only his Father knows the timing. When it does happen, he says, many would be caught completely off guard.

Jesus went on to speak in parables about the signs and wonders he expected to see in those entrusted with the gospel of the kingdom before he returned.

In the Parable of the Faithful and Unfaithful Servants (Matthew 24:45-51), the faithful servant follows through doing what his master had put him in charge of until he returned. He is rewarded with more responsibility. The unfaithful servant assumed that with the master’s delay he could do as he pleased. When the master showed up unexpectedly, the unfaithful servant is dealt with severely.

In The Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids (Matthew 25: 1-13) ten young women are involved in a wedding tradition. The bride and her bridesmaids, I imagine, learned that it was the beginning of the wedding week sometime before nightfall one evening. They may have caught word about extensive preparations being made for the marriage feast. The ten women prepare for their part in the ceremonies.

By tradition, the bridegroom would process with his friends at night to retrieve his bride and bring her back to his house for the wedding feast and ceremony. When he arrives, the bridesmaids join the procession carrying oil lamps.

Not knowing the exact day or hour of the bridegroom’s arrival, five of the women bring flasks of oil. I imagine that they are thinking “This may take time, but we’re gonna make it happen, we’re gonna do what we have to do to make the wedding and marriage feast a success. The bridegroom is counting on us.”

We learn that when the bridegroom is delayed the ten bridesmaids get drowsy and fall asleep. Then at midnight a shout awakes them: “The bridegroom is on his way!”

The ten get up and trim their lamps by cutting the burnt part of the wick and adding oil. But there is a problem. Five of the women had run out of fuel and brought no extra. They lacked the wherewithal to continue the simple task they were given. So, they ask for oil from the other five with extra oil.

But that’s not going to happen. The prepared five will do what is expected of them and the depleted five are sent to do what they need to do – go buy more oil. While the depleted five are away, the bridegroom arrives and the prepared bridesmaids process with the wedding party.

The depleted five, returning with lamps lit, find out that they are shut out of the wedding banquet and not even acknowledged. The prudent five were mindful of their duty to the Bride and Bridegroom. The foolish five missed an opportunity of a lifetime. It was lights-out for them.

In The Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30), a master goes on a trip. Before he leaves, he entrusts money to three slaves, each according to his ability. When he returns, he wants an account of their stewardship of what he entrusted to their care.

The slave given five talents has produced five more. The slave given two talents has produced two more. The slave given one talent has not increased its value. He played it safe.

The two slaves that produced a return on investment are rewarded with the master’s favor and receive more responsibility. The slave who did not increase the value of one talent, not even with accrued interest, has the talent taken away. The master gives the one talent to the one with ten talents. I imagine that the master wanted to see what he could do with eleven talents.

Keep watch!

In each of these parables the participants are given a responsibility and an opportunity to show themselves prudent and productive as they keep watch. But some foolishly don’t value what they have been entrusted with (signifying the gospel of the kingdom) and worse. They don’t fear or respect the master or bridegroom.

Did their love grow cold? Their indifferent attitude as to what was at stake for them and the master caught them completely off guard. If they had known the day and hour the master or bridegroom would show up and feigned readiness, how would the master or bridegroom assess who to keep around and who to get rid of and lock out?

No participation trophies were handed out when the master returns. Instead, the worthless are kicked outside, into the darkness. Their weeping and gnashing of teeth will not be acknowledged by the master. They had their day in the sun.

But those who, in the master’s absence, took their responsibility seriously without fail and for as long as it took and those with the sense and wherewithal to keep watch for as long as it took for the bridegroom to appear and those who knew what to do with what the master entrusted them with – these who “stand firm to the end will be saved.”

The main thrust of these parables:  Remain vigilant. Be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you don’t know the day or hour of the master’s return and your labor is not in vain (1 Cor. 15:58).

~~~~~

Do you hear what Jesus said above echoed and amplified in his words, through John the Seer, to the church in Ephesus?

“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands:

“I know your works, your toil and your endurance. I know that you cannot tolerate evildoers; you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not and have found them to be false.  I also know that you are enduring and bearing up for the sake of my name and that you have not grown weary.  But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.  Remember, then, from where you have fallen; repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.  Yet this is to your credit: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.  Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. To everyone who conquers, I will give permission to eat from the tree of life that is in the paradise of God.

Revelation 2: 1-7

What’s at stake. In the prophetic messages to the seven churches in Asia Minor, when Jesus has something against a church it comes down to the consequences he alluded to in the parables above: if you do not repent and change your ways before the master returns there will be judgement.

Note: This is the same alternative that those of us who bear witness to the truth presents to the world.

~~~~~

Brain Rot: What Screens Are Doing to Our Minds

 . . . this podcast covers the effects of too much screen time. Dr. Messina talks about this topic with Dr. Harry Gill, a renown psychiatrist who also has a PhD. in neuroscience. They discuss one of the greatest difficulties they see in their child, adolescent and adult patients who contend with way too much screen time, the all-encompassing phenomenon of ceaseless digital interactions that occur on various devices, over an array of social media platforms, and through multi-player online gaming. They contend that because we are bombarded with constant stimulation which causes us to be more distant and isolated from each other, various individual tragedies, addictions, and hollowed-out interpersonal lives are becoming commonplace in our world today. In addition, they talk about the fact that misinformation is spreading at a rapid pace while social structures are breaking down on a global scale. Their hope is to provide information that will help limit screen time for our listener and their family members.

Brain Rot: What Screens Are Doing to Our Minds (1)

Brain Rot: What Screens Are Doing to Our Minds (1) – New Books Network

~~~~~

Victor Davis Hanson: Democrats’ 10-Part Strategy to Stopping Trump (At Any Cost)

Home – VDH’s Blade of Perseus

Filed under apocalypse, Bible, Christianity, Kingdom of God, parables, The Gospel of Matthew Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sea Change

March 8, 2025 Leave a comment

Primordial disorder is the image presented at the opening of the creation account in Genesis. The earth, formless and empty (tohu wabohu), was completely covered by a deep (tehom) sea.

When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. – Genesis 1: 1-2

Earth’s oceanic outer layer undergoes a sea change when the Spirit of God’s hovers.

Psalm 104: 5-9 describes, in poetic form, the ordering of the watery chaos:

He set the earth on its foundations;
    it can never be moved.
You covered it with the watery depths as with a garment;
    the waters stood above the mountains.
But at your rebuke the waters fled,
    at the sound of your thunder they took to flight;
they flowed over the mountains,
    they went down into the valleys,
    to the place you assigned for them.
You set a boundary they cannot cross;
    never again will they cover the earth.

Reading on in Psalm 104 (v. 10-13) we find function. Channeled water provides the basic necessity for life on earth. Food growth follows.

Chaos Creatures Serve a Function

Once the chaotic waters of the primordial sea had been assigned functions, God, on the fifth day, created sea monsters, figures of menacing chaos (Gen. 1:21). Why bring order and then allow chaos creatures to exist? By God’s wisdom, we live in a world that has order, non-order, and disorder (See video below).

Mythical creatures from pagan myths, function in scripture as symbols of primordial chaos and opposition to God: sea-monsters, serpents, beasts, and dragons. Revelation presents them as fighting against God’s faithful witnesses who are working to restore order and bring God’s kingdom on earth.[i]

Sea Change Number Two

God created (gave functions to) the material cosmos over six days. Genesis 1 is a day-by-day account of establishing order from primordial disorder, establishing anthropic conditions and temple building. God pronounced each step in functional readiness “Good.” On the seventh day, he ‘rested’ in his temple to survey what had been done. The temple garden is a metaphor for the world.

Genesis 2. Mankind is placed in the temple garden and given instructions to maintain the good by God. But mankind goes off in a disordering direction. Evil and chaos ensues. God then acts to undo creation with the flood waters of chaos[ii] and to restore his “good” creation. Noah is the new caretaker.

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So, God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. . .

I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. Genesis 6: 11-13, 17

Sea Change Recalled

One day, Jesus’ disciples wanted Jesus to notice the temple buildings. Jesus then foretold the destruction of the temple. The perplexed and anxious disciples asked “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

Jesus goes on to speak of the signs of the end of the age. He then speaks about the necessity of watchfulness for, he tells them, no one knows the day or hour when end things will come to pass. To underscore this, he references a familiar story that involved a cataclysmic event that caught many unprepared.

 For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so, too, will be the coming of the Son of Man. – Matthew 24:36-39

History Lesson About the Moral Universe

The apostle Peter, in his second letter, tells his readers that there are scoffers who are saying that things on this earth have always continued the way they are now. He reminds them that this is not true. The earth was different when it was created and it was different again after the flood. He warns them that no one should scoff that God will make it different once again, judging the godless not with water but with fire. (2 Peter 3)

Jesus’ second coming will be a sea change for all of creation. Chaos will be removed.

It is Time for a Sea Change

Peter warned his readers, with reference to the Great Flood, about what can be expected if they continue as they are. John the Seer, alluding to the Great Flood in Revelation, writes that it is time (in his prophetic timeline) “for destroying those who destroy the earth.” – Revelation 11:18

“The ‘destroyers of the earth’ are the powers of evil: the dragon, the beast, and the harlot of Babylon (who in [Rev.] 19:2 is said to have ‘corrupted – or destroyed – the earth with her fornication’). With their violence, oppression, and idolatrous religion they are ruining God’s creation. His faithfulness to his creation requires that he destroy them in order to preserve and deliver it from evil. . .  This he did in the flood, which was a divine judgement aimed at delivering God’s creation from the ruinous violence of its inhabitants.”[iii]

John the Seer wrote Revelation in the context of the tyranny of the Roman Empire, the imperial cult, and a permissive and polytheistic culture. The apostle Paul, in the same setting, writes to a church with a more detailed description of the ruinous inhabitants of the earth and their similar fate:

Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! The sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, men who engage in illicit sex, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, swindlers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.  -1 Corinthians 6:9-10

I imagine that the proud, the perverse, the purposefully vague, the self-serving, and those who want to create a new humanity with demonic forces[iv] – any who plunder the created order for power, wealth and self-righteous ends will be met with divine judgement. Some will receive punishment that matches their sin (Rev. 16:8; 18:6; Rev. 22:18-19).

John the Seer prophesied about an end time involving a series of warning judgements to bring about repentance and the ultimate restoring of creation’s order from mankind’s reversion of it to chaos.

Final Sea Change

Scripture begins by telling an old story and ends by retelling the old story with a new and final outcome. Both narratives involve chaos and creation. The lynchpin of the two theological narratives – Genesis 1-11 and Revelation – and of history itself is the earthly, risen, and returning Jesus.

A final sea change occurs to restore creation. John the Seer writes:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. –Rev. 21:1

Creation is not destroyed, just as it wasn’t with the Great Flood. Rather, creation’s corrupting influence is removed. Think in terms of no longer being overcome by evil but the overcoming of evil with good. Think in terms of “if anyone is in the Messiah, there is new creation! Old things have gone, and look – everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5:17)

“The waters of the primeval abyss, that represent the source of destructive evil, the possibility of the reversion of creation to chaos, are finally no more.”[v]

~~~~~

Lent is a time for a sea change. It’s a time to remove chaos from your life.

This Lent appears to be the first time that corruption, misuse of funds, money laundering, excess, and disorder in the government are being shown the detox door. Hence, the weeping and gnashing of teeth in the MSM. Hence, destroyers of the earth want the chaos to continue as before.

A leviathan in Washington recently surfaced. What emerged was corrupt and destabilizing influence involving actors in the State Department, the Department of Defense, the “deep state”, the unaccountable administrative state, the unchecked CIA meddling in foreign affairs and a politically motivated FBI meddling in internal affairs, activist DOJ and federal judges, shady non-profits, and the propaganda of the MSM to maintain cover for the chaos.

Maelstroms are sucking us in: a proxy war with Russia, Middle East conflicts, a huge federal deficit, out of control spending by Congress, the Green New Deal wealth redistribution scam, and what to do with the over 12 million illegal economic migrants bringing with them neediness, disease and crime.

In the first 50 days of the Trump administration, ICE reported arresting over 14,000 convicted criminals, 9,800 migrants with pending criminal charges, 1,155 suspected gang members, and 44 foreign fugitives.

An additional 8,718 arrests were categorized as “immigration violators.”

ICE has arrested 32,000 violent criminals in Trump’s first 50 days.

And there’s a new beast on the horizon – AI.

AI is being touted as a new pathway to greater productivity (Why do we need that? For greater profits? To be unburdened by what has been?). It is said that disruptive AI will transform the workplace, replace jobs, shake up economies and reshape global alliances. Our world, with Promethean AI, will look different by 2030. AI will look at us differently, too.

~~~~~

Dr. John Walton, Job, Lecture 25, The world in the Book of Job: Order, non-order and disorder

[i] The creation of the “sporty” Leviathan (Ps. 104:26), a creature that cannot be tamed, shows us God’s mastery over powerful creatures. Leviathan was used metaphorically to instruct Job (Job 41). Job (a behemoth-like creature) cannot tame God to his ideas of how the world works.

[ii] Consider that several ancient Near East accounts of a devastating flood were understood as a god using force to restore order in the world. See Genesis 6-9 for the theological interpretation of the mythic flood.

The writer of the Genesis Flood account, using hyperbole, wanted to impress upon the reader the theological implications of a universal “cataclysmic event” that occurred to restore creation. There was no global deluge, as science has determined and Ps 104: 9 indirectly states. No matter. The author wanted the reader to understand the theological significance of God’s act.

See also Genesis and the Flood: Understanding the Biblical Story – Article – BioLogos;

The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate

The Flood – Undeceptions

[iii] Bauckham, Richard. (1993/2018). The Theology of the Book of Revelation. Cambridge University Press, 1993. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511819858. PP 52

[iv] Yuval Harari, historian and futurist, gay Israeli and WEF advisor comes to mind and so does the N.I.C.E., The National Institute of Coordinated Experiments in That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis

[v] Ibid 53

~~~~~

Protect our food supply from the Cure worse Than the Problem

Action Over Talk: Join the Nationwide Protest Against Food Supply mRNA!

This Friday, Americans across the country are coming together to take a stand. Concern is growing as Secretary Rollins moves closer to approving mRNA vaccines for the beef, dairy, and poultry industry to combat diseases like Avian Flu. Many are voicing their opposition, demanding that these vaccines not be used in our food supply.

 Make Your Voice Heard! Flood Secretary Rollins’ email with your concerns:

AgSec@usda.gov

Contact Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins of whitehouse

Here is a structured email template for Secretary @BrookeLRollins:

Subject: Immediate Halt to Meat Supply Vaccination

Dear Secretary Rollins,

As Americans who supported the election of Donald J. Trump, we are deeply concerned about your plan to introduce vaccines into our nation’s meat supply, including pork, cattle, poultry, and even seafood.

We do not merely request a pause—we demand a complete and permanent stop to this effort. The American people will not accept government-mandated intervention in our food supply, especially without full transparency and consent.

If the USDA continues to push forward with testing and implementation of the H5N1 vaccine, we are prepared to take action. Our voices will not be ignored, and we will make it clear to President Trump that millions of Americans oppose this overreach.

We stand firm in our right to protect our food, our health, and our families. This is non-negotiable.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your State]

With the news that mRNA vaccinated beef, dairy, eggs, and poultry are already in the food supply, some are demanding to know where our Secretary of Health is. You’ll be pleased to know he’s practicing self-care with long walks in the mountains, while currently reposting advice from the CDC. 

https://x.com/SecKennedy

Filed under apocalypse, Christianity, creation, creation care, Culture, Political Commentary, Revelation, Revelation Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Surface Readings

January 25, 2025 Leave a comment

Now is the age of anxiety. ― W H Auden

“THE END IS NEAR.” Phenomena Pending.

Impending doom has been in the news during my entire lifetime. You can view some of the headlines and pronouncements here: Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions.

Before I came on the scene in the early 50s, the advent of nuclear weapons in the 40s posed the threat of nuclear war annihilation. Adding to American’s anxiety and panic during the Cold War period that followed was the new mass medium of 1950s television. Its B&W news, public service announcements, documentaries, and science fiction programming brought into homes the stark magnitude of the nuclear age.

One response during that anxious time was to use ‘Duck and Cover’ drills in schools across the United States. Students were trained as to what they should do in case of an atomic attack – dive under their desks and cover their heads (Producing another Atomic Kid!).

And though in the early 60s the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) was discussed as a mutual deterrent, no one knew what would happen as in 1962 when the Cold War nearly escalated into nuclear war. The United States and the Soviet Union faced off during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The escalating arms race was at issue.

Released in 1965, Barry McGuire’s The Eve Of Destruction protest song addressed the instability in the world – the prospect of nuclear war, the Vietnam War, the middle east conflict and civil rights.

During the late 60s and early 70s, I was involved in the Chicago area Jesus People movement. I remember attending a Larry Norman concert where he sang, I Wish We’d All Been Ready. (Sadly, the song refers to a “Rapture” event, a popular escape plan for Christians based on a mis-reading of scripture.)

Life was filled with guns and war
And everyone got trampled on the floor
I wish we’d all been ready . . .

There’s no time to change your mind
The Son has come and you’ve been left behind . . .

A man and wife asleep in bed
She hears a noise and turns her head
He’s gone
I wish we’d all been ready . . .

Spectacularly wrong environmental and climate predictions were made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970. Some in 1971 predicted an Ice Age. Not one of the alarmist climate crisis predictions during my lifetime (or yours) have ever come to pass.

Nor did the wild claims of ‘The Adam and Eve Story’, written by a former US Air Force employee, UFO researcher and self-proclaimed psychic Chan Thomas in 1966. For the past 59 years the book has been kept under wraps by the CIA. The claims of the book are based around periodic cataclysmic events in history. The next one he proposed would be a sudden reversal of Earth’s magnetic poles, thereby wreaking havoc and total destruction to the planet in a matter of hours.

“You Never Want a Serious Crisis to Go to Waste.”

Along with the many end-of the world scenarios came Pop eschatology. The end-times prophecy business has been around during my entire lifetime. Not long ago I received a flyer announcing a weekend End-Times Prophecy seminar to be held at a local hotel.

In 1995 a series of books fictionalizing events surrounding a supposed rapture and seven-year tribulation period prior to the second coming of Christ began to appear on best-seller lists. The 16 Left Behind lowbrow thrillers of the Left Behind series, authored by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, arrived on the scene twenty-five years after another end-times book.

When Hal Lindsey and C. C. Carlson came out with The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970 it sold millions of copies. Their ‘non-fiction’ end-times book was later adapted (1979) into a documentary film narrated by Orson Welles. 

Some readers might recall that Orson Well’s, on October 30, 1938, gave a dramatic War of the Worlds radio broadcast. It scared the heck out of a lot of people. Some say Lindsey’s book did the same.

The Pop eschatology of LGPE, applied to current events such as the Cold War, was released shortly after the Israel’s Six-Day War. The authors aligned their dispensational theology with contemporary geopolitical events to show that civilization was headed for doomsday. They pushed hardcore Zionism.

 Men Who Stare at Charts

The Left Behind series, The Late Great Planet Earth, and much of today’s “prophecy”, are steeped in John Nelson Darby’s dispensational theology and “rapture” nonsense. Darby (1800-1882) was an Anglo-Irish Bible teacher, clergyman, and founder of the Plymouth Brethren and the Exclusive Brethren. Among other things, he thought that Christians should not be involved in politics (as if Jesus ascended to the Father only to leave us here to ponder salvation in different epochs, to develop dispensational theology charts to schedule God’s acts, and to console ourselves with millennial dreams.)

In my estimation, dispensational theology, which didn’t exist in the church history until Darby came along and the Scofield Bible expanded its reach, is a way of charting Scripture into manageable chunks of salvation history and a way of managing God and expectations. This theology proposed to show how God planned for people’s salvation in each historical period by what relates to Israel, what relates to the church, and what the End Times will look like. It was a way to get a handle on dates and times and God.

Dispensational theology and its offshoot Pop eschatology seem to be a science project applied to theology. Darby, the originator of a pre-trib rapture, lived during the 1800s, a period following the Enlightenment when knowledge by way of rationalism and of empiricism was emphasized.

I don’t know that anyone cares about dispensational theology except for a few wonky theologians. If you do, then see The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation and What Is Dispensationalism and Who Believes It?

Pop eschatology looks at the geopolitical landscape, cherry picks what is literal and symbolic, and crams headline news into end-time predictions. But “de-coding” symbolic scripture prophecies to give a detailed scenario of end-time events is not Christian eschatology. It’s trying to time the market for the I wish we’d all been ready crowd to jump in. It’s manipulation of scripture and of people to produce a turn to God out of FOMO.

~~~

Added 6-23-2025, in light of the Israel/US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities:

I have a great deal of sympathy for Christians who still believe the lore that dispensationalism offers. I understand what motivates them and why. But, it is well past time for the church to provide better Bible teaching that does not encourage American Christians to develop misplaced loyalties. American Christians have duties to their nation and their church. But for too many American Christians, misplaced theological convictions have led to political loyalties that prioritize Israel over both the church and their own nation.

https://www.jchasedavis.com/p/rumors-of-war

Questions Abound

This post is not meant to be a reproach to making sense and order of what is happening around us. That’s what we do, especially in a time and under those who “forsake the law and praise the wicked” (Prov. 28:4):

Why did Joe Biden award the wicked Hillary Clinton and George Soros the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

And why did Biden pardon the treasonous General Mark Milley and the murderous Anthony Fauci? Why did Joe Biden preemptively pardon them and the illegal Jan. 6 committee? (I don’t believe these Federal pardons are legal. In any case, states can bring charges against them.)

Why did Joe Biden commute the sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row — a list that includes at least five child killers and several mass murderers? Biden gave the reprieve to some of the nation’s most violent murderers — nine of them found too dangerous to live after butchering fellow inmates — as part of his effort at “ensuring a fair and effective justice system.”

Why did Joe Biden preemptively pardon capitol police officer Michael Byrd, the one who murdered unarmed US Air Force veteran Ashli Babbit on J6?

Why haven’t the “Spies Who Lie” – 51  intelligence agents – who signed a letter in 2020 saying emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop carried “classic earmarks of a Russian information operation in an effort to interfere with the election been brought to justice? (Trump just yanked their security clearances.)

How does one justify Biden protecting Ukraine’s border with billions and billions of US taxpayer dollars and weapons as being more important than protecting our own overrun borders and our exposed citizens? And how does one justify Biden and Ukraine escalating the war with Russia to a point that’s dangerously close to nuclear war?

And what about those (Globalists, WEF, WHO) who appear to use dystopian novels as their guidebook to immanentize the eschaton with their version of sense and order – a New World Order – under the guise of saving the planet (from the people living here)?

And, going forward, why turn over our future to godless pagan Globalists and their anti-human tokenization of life?  Why let them concentrate power in human-replacing AI?

(Thank God. Trump just signed executive orders to get the U.S. out of the WHO and out of the Paris Climate Accord. He also signed an EO barring central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). CBDCs could facilitate a social credit scoring system that controlled a person’s behavior and assets.

Trump also signed EOs to secure the border with a National Emergency and EOs that work to eliminate “government censorship of free speech” and the “weaponization of government” against “political adversaries of the previous administration.” Thank God Christians were involved in politics this last election!

Seeing evil expand its reach over the last four years of the illegitimate Biden regime and finding out that there were Christians who supported four more years of it just to say “No” to Trump, had me horrified at where this world is headed. With Trump as president now we have some buffer against the evil that works to overcome us. The fight against dark forces is not over.)

Alarm bells should go off when you hear dogmatic pronouncements such as “Trump will destroy democracy” and “humanity is unequivocally facing a climate emergency.” These preposterous statements are meant to manipulate. We must be careful as to what and who we put our trust in.

When things converge and become dark, ugly and threatening, imaginations take on visions of the end times. And unless you are a nihilist and believe in Nothing except power, you desire a time when things will be put right. Most of us want justice to prevail in the end and to see all of our best hopes realized.

Despite literal, surface-level interpretations of conditions here on earth leading to end-of the world predictions, false prophecies, doomsday scenarios, worries about near-Earth asteroids, hyperbolic threats of “mass extinction” due to a “climate crisis”, and a “global crisis of unprecedented reach and proportion” (Fauci’s gain-of-function pandemic) The End has not happened during my 70+ years. Why?

“THE END IS IN PROCESS.”

The delay of The End, the delay in Christ’s Parousia or Second Coming, is God’s patience and grace giving people time hear the truth and to repent. How do they hear the truth? Those who have entered God’s kingdom as a result of his first appearance have a role in bearing witness to the nations to bring about God’s universal kingdom before his Second Coming.

Before “God through Christ Jesus judges the secret thoughts of all” (Paul in Rom. 2:16), all nations are to hear the gospel message. God’s desire is that all people hear the truth about His Son and turn to him and away from the worship of false gods and false power. This is what John of Patmos communicates to seven struggling churches in a Roman province in Asia with his apocalyptic prophecy Revelation.

John of Patmos writes to the seven churches, each in their own context, about their witness within the context of the worldwide tyranny of Rome and the broader context of God’s cosmic battle against evil and his purpose for his creation and kingdom.

John makes it clear that witness of the truth proceeds based on the church’s loyalty to God’s kingdom and the church knowing the truth worth dying for and on the church being a faithful witness of that truth even unto death. The truth:  Jesus Christ, the Lamb Who was slain, is One with God and worthy of all worship and praise.

Revelation was written within the setting of the Roman empire. Early Christians were struggling against the “satanic trinity: the dragon or serpent (the primeval, supernatural source of all opposition to God), the beast or sea-monster (the imperial power of Rome), and the second beast or earth-monster (the propaganda machine of the imperial cult).”[i] The worship and witness of only the One True God and not of the Roman emperor put these early Christians in serious opposition to this “satanic trinity.”

Regarding a surface reading of events and of scripture (sometimes called “the plain meaning of the text”), consider the reverse engineering applied to the Genesis creation account to create a ‘Biblical origins’ response to Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and later, for the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Based on research that includes astrophysics, geology, and the James Webb Space Telescope, the universe is estimated to be 13.8 -26.7 billion years old. But reverse engineering of earth’s age using a literal surface reading interpretation of the creation account in Genesis estimates the earth to be about 6-10,000 years old. In terms of Jewish and Chrisitan thinking over millennia, the young earth creationism (YEC) position came about recently.

The YEC position has tied itself to concerns of Biblical inerrancy as if only a plain reading of the text, the lowest level of understanding, is what makes the Bible the Word of God. The fact that the Bible was written for us but not to us, the YEC position doesn’t allow for a historically contextual understanding to be taken into account.

Consider that the same reverse engineering used for the creation account (recently, the attempt to conform physical evidence into a Young-Earth biblical framework) has often been applied to End Time accounts in scripture to conform events to dispensational theology.

The prophecy and theology of Revelation relates not literal dates and geopolitical events but cosmic eventualities and resolutions. Its message for those in Christ is to persevere while living with evil opposition all around and with the tension of the imminence and delay of Christ’s return.

John encourages the churches: the enemies of God are finally defeated to make way for the ushering in of God’s fully realized everlasting kingdom. Heaven and earth will be joined together.

The delay of The End is a concern in heaven. John writes (Rev. 6): When [the Lamb] broke the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slaughtered for the word of God and for the testimony they had given; they cried out with a loud voice, “Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?” 

John’s apocalyptic vision, filled with symbols and with descriptions of mythical characters evoking the book of Daniel, summons our imaginations to visualize things as heaven sees them. John’s prophecy, like the hundreds of OT prophecies he alludes to, is to reveal God’s POV.

 Revelation, you see, is what history has been all about. With that understanding, we carry on “knowing what soon must take place” (Rev. 1:1).

More about Revelation in my next post.

[i] Bauckham, R. (1993/2018). The theology of the Book of Revelation. PP 88-89

~~~~~

The Tribulation and the Rapture – Dr. Walter Martin (Historic Premillennial)

~~~~~

“Can you give me a hand moving these?”

Daily Cartoon: Monday, May 13th | The New Yorker

Reports from Davos before President Trump speaks:

Personhood For Rivers And Trees: Larry Taunton On The Fundamentally Anti-Human Sentiment Of WEF

Noor Bin Ladin Reporting From WEF: The Golden Age Is Incompatible With AI Replacement

Filed under 2024 Current Events, Christianity, end times, Kingdom of God, prophecy, Revelation, Revelation, The Great Reset, The Kingdom of God Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

What’s Your Relationship with Wisdom?

November 27, 2024 Leave a comment

Imagine. You are the half-brother of a new baby brother. The little guy seems to be prized above all else. Certainly, there was a big fuss about his birth. Field workers showed up just to see him. They talked of angels appearing.

A couple years later, sages come from a long way away. They talk of being guided by a star to find a newborn king. They give your half-brother expensive gifts.

Then your father has a dream. He says that authorities want to kill your brother. Your father and step-mother suddenly take your brother and flee to another country. You and your brothers and sisters stay with relatives in Bethlehem. When they return with the boy, your family moves to Nazareth in Galilee. There are too many eyes on Bethlehem, your father says.

You can’t forget the time your family went to up Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. Afterward, walking for a day toward home, your step-mother finds out that your half-brother is not around. When asked about his whereabouts, you said “How should I know where he is? Am I his baby sitter?”

Your family walks back to Jerusalem to look for him. Your father and mother ask folks along the way if they’ve seen your brother. It turns out, after three days of looking for that guy, that you find him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. He’s got their attention! The nerve of your twelve-year kid brother!

Your step-mother was panicky. She was not at all happy when we finally found him. She said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”

And he says “Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” That sounded like crazy talk.

You, Jacob, and your brothers, Joses, Judah, and Simon and your sisters Salome and Mary are astonished at the attention your father and step-mother and others give to your half-brother. You become jealous and find it easy to look askance at him. You are not alone in these feelings.

When he teaches in your synagogue, people whisper “Where’d he get all this? Where’d he get this wisdom? How does he have that kind of power in his hands?” Everyone was wondering “Who is this guy?” “Isn’t he just a local yokel like the rest of us?” They took offense at him.

He is your brother, so you try to reserve judgement. He does say and do astonishing things but you find it really hard to believe in him. He’s been a mystery since the beginning. You and your three brothers think that if he really is such a big deal he should go show himself to the whole world. The four of you push him to do this. But he goes in a deadly direction.

After your half-brother’s resurrection, you are convinced beyond any doubt that he is the Christ, God’s great mystery. You agree with the apostle Paul that he became to us wisdom from God. And, that everything that we have – right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start – comes from God by way of Jesus Christ.

~~~

Who is Jacob, in translations called James? He was a half-brother of Jesus and therefore, an eyewitness of his life. He was likely one of the sources for the gospel of Luke along with Peter, Cleopas, Mary, and Joanna. James could vouch for the infancy narrative and childhood of Jesus. The gospel of Luke notes, in the account of the boy Jesus at the temple, that “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” Both James and Mary would know this.

James is mentioned in the gospel of Mark (6:3) and the gospel of Matthew (13:55). He is in Paul’s list of eyewitnesses who saw the risen Lord (1 Cor. 15: 5-7).

Paul mentions that he received his apostleship in the same tradition as the Jerusalem apostles, including Peter and James (Gal. 1:18). He mentions James first, and then Peter and John, as “pillars” in his allusion to the temple (Gal. 2:9).

After the resurrection, the Jerusalem church became the mother church of the Christian movement under the leadership of The Twelve and James. James is mentioned as head of that church (Acts 12:17; 15:13-21; 21:18-25). (It needs to be said: all first-century Christianity was Jewish. Early Christianity was a distinctive form of Judaism. James writes from the same Jewish heritage and wisdom tradition that Jesus taught from. “Christianity” was not a break from the past.)

Jacob wrote the letter/book of James.

James is considered the Proverbs of the New Testament. Written with knowledge of Jewish wisdom-traditions and Torah, James is simple and direct in his words. He writes wisdom sayings – practical moral instruction. He doesn’t pull any punches.

James instructs us to match faith with good works and to “Show by your good life that your works are done with the gentleness born of wisdom.” And not just any wisdom. We are to choose “wisdom from above” and not the “earthly, unspiritual, devilish” kind. (James 3: 13-18).

It has been suggested that the New Testament book of James “has been heavily influenced by two sources, the first of which is Jesus’ teaching about life in the Kingdom of God, especially the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7).“ See “hearers and doers” example in Matthew 7: 24-27 and James 1:22-25.

“The second key influence is the biblical wisdom book of Proverbs, especially the poems in Proverbs 1-9.” See Proverbs 1-9  and James 1:5 regarding the importance of acquiring wisdom.

Reading James, I see the parallels and influence of Proverbs and the Sermon on the Mount. I also read James in terms of another selection of wisdom literature: the Book of Job. Therein, hardships and trials require a new perspective. The letter of James, written to the Jewish Christians throughout the Diaspora, speaks of the need for wisdom and Job-like perseverance in a world where people struggle and suffer because of what they profess.   

Read James with the Book of Job in mind:

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face various trials, consider it all joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance complete its work, so that you may be complete and whole, lacking in nothing.

And . . .

Blessed is anyone who endures temptation. Such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. No one, when tempted, should say, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one. But one is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it; then, when desire has conceived, it engenders sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death. (James. 1: 12-15)

And . . .

Indeed, we call blessed those who showed endurance. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the outcome that the Lord brought about, for the Lord is compassionate and merciful. (James. 5:11)

The Book of Job tell us where not to look for wisdom.  Job 28: 12-15 says that we won’t find wisdom and understanding in the human realm:

“But where shall wisdom be found?

And where is the place of understanding?

Mortals do not know the way to it,

and it is not found in the land of the living.

The deep says, ‘It is not in me,’

and the sea says, ‘It is not with me.’

It cannot be gotten for gold,

and silver cannot be weighed out as its price.”

James tells us where to look for wisdom:

 If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord. (James. 1: 5-8)

~~~

The Lord by wisdom founded the earth;
    by understanding he established the heavens;
by his knowledge the deeps broke open,
    and the clouds drop down the dew.

Prov. 3: 19-20

The Lord created me [Lady Wisdom] at the beginning of his work,
    the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up,
    at the first, before the beginning of the earth. . .

I was beside him, like a master worker,
and I was daily his delight,
    playing before him always,
playing in his inhabited world
    and delighting in the human race.

Prov. 8: 22,30-31; Proverbs 1:20–33 and Proverbs 8:1—9:12

Christians typically start their version of the creation narrative in Genesis 1 and 2. I start with what many scholars consider, based on archaic language, style, themes, and similar works, the oldest book of the Bible, the Book of Job. After hearing the human perspective about the cosmos from Job’s friends, I want the Divine perspective which includes the Wisdom Hymn in Job 28.

God alone knows the way to Wisdom,

he knows the exact place to find it.

He knows where everything is on earth,

he sees everything under heaven.

Job and his friends thought the world worked a certain way. They thought God acted a certain way. But they lacked Divine perspective – wisdom. After all that is said in the human realm, God questions Job from out of a whirlwind:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.”

“Have you ever in your days commanded the morning light?”

“Where does light live, or where does darkness reside?”

“Can you lead out a constellation in its season?”

God reveals to Job and his friends their utter lack of understanding of how the complex cosmos is ordered. He describes intricate wonders of creation (Job 38-41) and challenges Job to even begin to understand His world. It becomes quickly evident that it is not their place to question God’s rectitude or wisdom.

To illustrate further, God instructs Job with the ways of Behemoth and Leviathan (Job 40-41).

Wisdom from God matches us up with the created order and the Creator. Wisdom is working with God’s created order, avoiding disorder and recognizing non-order (John Walton). See Uncharted Understanding | Kingdom Venturers

Having information is not having knowledge. Having information is not having wisdom. Knowledge is knowing what to do with information. Wisdom is understanding, discernment, and character supplied by God and applied with knowledge. Lady Wisdom calls us to good sense, sound judgment, and moral understanding. Wisdom has the capacity to contemplate profounder problems of human life and destiny.

It is the wisdom of the clever to understand where they go,
    but the folly of fools misleads. Prov. 14:8

To get wisdom is to love oneself;
    to keep understanding is to prosper. Prov. 19:8

Buy truth, and do not sell it;
    buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding. Prov. 23:23

James, steeped in Jewish wisdom-traditions, knows that wisdom belongs to the very nature of God himself. He knows that wisdom comes to man only as a divine gift. He writes telling readers to ask for the divine gift of wisdom by faith.

 If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who “worry their prayers” are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open. (James 1:5-8)

The beast Behemoth is not worried:

A raging river does not alarm it;
    it is secure, though the Jordan should surge against its mouth.

-Job 40: 23

~~~~~

Proverbs: Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly

Proverbs: Lady Wisdom & Lady Folly

~~~~~

Foster Care

Ronda Paulson and her husband Corey founded Isaiah 117 House to provide a safe and loving home for children awaiting placement in the foster care system. Isaiah 177 House was featured on Mike’s Facebook show, Returning the Favor. Ronda tells how her appearance on the show affected her mission, her life, and especially her health. 

Podcast – Mike Rowe

Isaiah 117 House

~~~~~

O’Keefe strikes again.

https://x.com/i/status/1861189891985678696

Wisdom (and the restoration of Democracy):

The Trump-Vance transition team announced that Stanford Professor Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, author of “The Great Barrington Declaration,” is his pick to lead the National Institutes of Health. This is a terrific choice; Dr. Bhattacharya is highly respected and was right about the negative effects of lockdowns during the COVID pandemic when so many others were wrong. He didn’t back down despite numerous attempts to silence him. (Emphasis mine.)

(Professor Jay Bhattacharya is ten-thousand times better than former NIH director Dr. Francis Collins!!)

Trump Nominates Professor Who Sounded Alarm on COVID Lockdowns—and Was Censored—to Lead NIH – RedState

What Jay Bhattacharya, Trump’s NIH Pick, Has Said About Anthony Fauci – Newsweek

Restoring order (and Democracy):

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum addressed U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s renewed threats of steep tariffs this week, asserting that migrant caravans are no longer reaching the U.S.-Mexico border.

Migrant Caravans Not Reaching Border, Claudia Sheinbaum Says After Trump Threats – Newsweek

~~~

Doris Lee, Thanksgiving, 1935, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.

Filed under Christianity, Proverbs, Proverbs, Scripture, The book of Job, Wisdom, wisdom literature Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

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