Tag: Christianity

Merry Christmas, one and all

I wish you all a Merry Christmas today.  To the believers, that you may know joy and hope in the fullness of your faith.  To the unbelievers, that God will help your unbelief and one day grant you that which you truly seek, whatever that may be.  Regardless of whether you are a believer or not, I encourage you to set aside a few minutes amidst the happy chaos of the celebration today to reflect upon what we are celebrating today. 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.  The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.  He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.(John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”)  Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given.  For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
– John 1:1-17

WND column

Merry Christmas, Everyone

For many Americans, this Christmas will be a difficult one. Millions have lost their homes in the past year, millions more have lost their jobs and many of those who are fortunate enough to still own their homes and possess their jobs are deeply in debt. Many families will not be together for the holidays because they can’t afford to travel, they do not wish to be gate-raped or one of their family members is among the 2.3 million who make up the American prison population. It is understandably hard for many Americans to celebrate what has become an increasingly commercial holiday when their prospects for the future look less than rosy.

Christianity and paganism

Being ignorant of history, the secularists of the West are naive in the extreme. Having been raised the fruits amidst the societal inertia of the civilization once known as Christendom, they errantly conclude that the heat will remain once the fires have been quenched simply because it takes time for the embers to die down. Even for the committed and militant atheist, this account of a modern-day Saul’s unexpected conversion to Christianity should underline the central need for civilized religion to compete with the attractions of other religions.

In the course of those days the priest has a vision: he meets the devil who tells him he will become a great warrior. The devil says to increase his power he must continue the rituals of child sacrifice and cannibalism. The initiation is complete and the priest is now one of the most powerful leaders in West Africa. The priest is 11 years old. As prophesied, the boy priest grew up to become one of Liberia’s most notorious warlords: General Butt Naked….

It was the summer of 1996 and his clansmen were caught up in a ferocious battle. It was decided that a sacrifice was needed. As the rockets rained down, a mother brought her three-year-old daughter to him. Something about the child struck the pitiless General and for the first time in his life he hesitated. As he relives the moment with me, his face becomes contorted.

‘The child was very unusually beautiful and kind. Most of the children are brought to me by the elders, they’re crying, they’re fighting. This child was peaceful,’ he recalls. ‘I thought, “This child must not die.” I struggled.

‘Of all of the thousands that I killed, I wish I did not kill that little girl . . . ‘ his voice trails off. He is close to tears for the first and only time. ‘Right after killing her, I had my epiphany.’

He claims he saw a white light in the shape of a man. A voice told him, ‘repent and live or refuse and die’. He believes it was Christ.

The impact was immediate. From that day the killing, the sacrifices and cannibalism ended and Blahyi entered a period of turmoil that led his men to believe he had gone mad. Within months he had left the Butt Naked Brigade and by the end of September 1996 he was baptised in the sea near Monrovia.

Few in the West are conversant with the similarly hideous practices of the pagan Europeans that preceded their conversion to Christianity. From the flaming human sacrifices of the druids to the ritual rape-and-murders of the Viking funerals, Europeans have been historically prone to behavior that is no less abhorrent to modern sensibilities than the cannibalistic devil-worship of Africans today. There is no evidence whatsoever that a progressive secular society can survive for more than three generations; most of the evidence tends to indicate that it can’t even survive one.

The great irony is that the position of the scientific, anti-religious progressive is ultimately based on a non-scientific and religious foundation: an unshaken belief in the perfectability of Man and the inevitability of human progress towards religion-inspired behavior without religious belief.

Mailvox: Jesus and war

LJ has his doubts:

Read your bit on Jesus and war. It is hard to believe Jesus would support all the death that War brings to innocent children. What would he say about our inability to put money into education for the poor. You are fooling yourself.

I’m always a little taken aback when people begin with a reasonable, if mistaken, point, and then go on to make asses of themselves by making baseless declarative statements about me. How am I fooling myself? And with regards to what? While everyone is certainly welcome to disagree with me, you have to either know nothing about me or be almost completely unfamiliar with this blog to believe that my opinions are formed on the same basis of that amorphous collection of vaguely remembered elementary school classes, parental biases, college lectures, personal insecurities, peer pressures, and emotional reactions that go into forming most people’s opinions.

Now, as to the subject in question, Jesus doesn’t speak much on war, but it is clear that he doesn’t regard it as the be-all and end-all of evil that most people today seem to consider it, except when the media and the White House have whipped them up into a frenzy of support for another round of long-distance bombing.

First, God Himself wages war against men. “You fear the sword, and the sword is what I will bring against you, declares the Sovereign LORD.” – Ezekiel 11:8.

Second, Jesus did not come to bring peace. “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” – Matthew 10:33

Third, Jesus intends to make serious war upon mankind in the future. “I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.” He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.” – Revelation 19:11

Fourth, I’ve never seen any evidence that Jesus cares particularly about education, either for the poor or anyone else, to say nothing of any moral duty to pay for the education of poor children.

In conclusion, it would appear that LJ doesn’t know the Bible nor the first thing about what Jesus would say about anything. The efforts of the New Atheists notwithstanding, spouting an opinion in complete ignorance is unlikely to convince anyone of anything.

Brothel or burqah: the reality

You can’t say I didn’t warn you about the choice an increasing number of Western women are presently making:

Tony Blair’s sister-in-law announced her conversion to Islam last weekend. Journalist Lauren Booth embraced the faith after what she describes as a ‘holy experience’ in Iran. She is just one of a growing number of modern British career women to do so…. According to Kevin Brice from ­Swansea University, who has specialised in studying white conversion to Islam, these women are part of an intriguing trend. He explains: ‘They seek spirituality, a higher meaning, and tend to be deep thinkers. The other type of women who turn to Islam are what I call “converts of convenience”. They’ll assume the trappings of the religion to please their Muslim husband and his family, but won’t necessarily attend mosque, pray or fast.’…

For a significant amount of women, their first contact with Islam comes from ­dating a Muslim boyfriend.

Although this may be shocking to the typical half-sapient and maleducated secular mind, numbed as it is from between 12 and 27 years of unmitigated feminist and multicultural propaganda, it was entirely predictable. And was, in fact, predicted by numerous parties. The primary reason neither the Greeks nor America’s Founding Fathers permitted women to vote is because they are much more intellectually malleable than men. Even the most fervent feminist will enthusiastically embrace the submission of Islam if a man is able to inspire her rationalization hamster to spin in that direction.

Osama bin Laden was correct in stating that Islam is the strong horse in comparison with secular post-Christian America. Secular post-Christianity is both rootless and pointless; it has neither raison d’etre nor does it provide anyone with objectives beyond the momentary and the material. While the abstract thinkers of the cognitive elite can come up with higher purposes of their own, (most of which involve placing themselves in control of other people and wind up getting a lot of people killed), such self-serving intellectual ephemeralities are incapable of satisfying the spiritual hunger of the masses.

In turning away from its historical identity as Christendom, the West has created a vast spiritual void and already the weaker souls are drifting into the pagan madness that Chesterton, Lewis, and other Christian savants predicted in the previous century. There will never be an atheist society, because human society can no more abide a spiritual vaccuum than nature can abide a material one.

Mailvox: Game and the Christian man

AG asks for advice on dealing with the cold equations:

I’m a 22 years old Christian male. I’m by no means a natural alpha, but I’m a pretty bright guy and it is quite easy for me to make myself attractive to women. Social reticence becomes “aloofness”, not knowing what to say (and not saying anything) becomes “mysteriousness” — you get the idea. Maybe it’s not that simple, but from experience I know that attracting women is not tough for me. My dilemma is this: every Christian male I know seems to either be a reformed badboy (like you) or very beta. With the court system completed stacked against men, a failed marriage can completely destroy a guy. What’s a guy like me to do? Let out my inner badboy for the next 8 years and then beg God for mercy or just be the nice Christian beta and hope everything works out? Neither option seems appealing at all. You’re one of the few people I can think of that is a Christian and views women and modern America in a realistic way. I can’t figure out what to do and I would really love to hear your thoughts.

Paul is quite clear on sinning that grace might abound and it is no wiser to indulge in rampant sex for a few years with the idea that you’ll eventually set it aside than it is to decide to spend the next eight years in a coked-up state before getting clean. I remember one evening at the Digital Ghetto when the White Buffalo, Big Chilly, Horn, and Micron were all happily ensconced around Bongzilla. (I stayed very far away from the herb after an unpleasant experience with a PCP-laced joint at DV8.) Micron had cracked a joke about how they were all killing brain cells, but Horn protested that he had read a study reporting that it took ten years of regular marijuana usage to have a negative impact on one’s brain.

At which point, Big Chilly smiled – he had gone to high school with Horn – and said: “And how long have you been smoking?” At that point, he had three years left, but that was more than 15 years ago and he certainly hasn’t quit. So, the point is that you’re kidding yourself if you think you can simply dive into the corruption of the world and expect to come out clean on the other side according to your schedule.

But no one said you have to be the nice Christian beta either. Alpha isn’t the notches on the bedpost; they are merely the consequence of the attitude. If you are a leader, a woman will follow you anywhere, including to church. I have seen it happen. And a Christian man shouldn’t consider himself bound to act like a beta, let alone gamma, around women, in fact, he should be totally indifferent to the opinion of the scarlet women of the world, which is a fundamentally alpha quality.

I think you are confusing Churchianity for Christianity in equating betatude with faith. If you’re afraid to correct someone because it might hurt their feelings, if you can’t open your mouth without deprecating yourself, if you are more afraid to tell a woman not to gossip or stuff her face than tell an adulterer that his behavior is wrong, you are a Churchian using Christianity as an excuse for your inner gamma. You’ve already learned that you don’t have to be an arrogant bastard in order to get the girls’ hamsters spinning madly, trying to figure you out. Now you just need to take the next step and learn how to open your mouth without taking three steps back.

The reason Game works is that it is a pale, corrupted reflection of the truth. But what is its most central message? It sounds like one of Paul’s most important themes! For neither God nor Game have given you a spirit of fear. The Christian man should approach a woman to whom he is attracted with the same total lack of fear as the most hardened master of Game; if she’s not the one, then what do you care if she rejects you? The sooner she does, the better!

Take a look around

What we have here in this prediction of evangelical collapse is a very typically American failure to look beyond the cultural borders while attempting to contemplate global trends:

We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West. Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the “Protestant” 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

If the full extent of your cultural awareness is limited to Europe and the United States, as is the case with the New Atheist and most American Christians alike, this perspective makes an amount of sense as long as you ignore the demographic trends. But once you take into account the explosive growth of Christianity in Africa and Asia, the thesis falls apart.

From NPR, of all places: In The land Of Mao, A Rising Tide Of Christianity

Official Chinese surveys now show that nearly one in three Chinese describe themselves as religious, an astonishing figure for an officially atheist country, where religion was banned until three decades ago. The last 30 years of economic reform have seen an explosion of religious belief. China’s government officially recognizes five religions: Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam and Daoism. The biggest boom of all has been in Christianity, which the government has struggled to control….

Some recent surveys have calculated there could be as many as 100 million Chinese Protestants. That would mean that China has more Christians than Communist Party members, which now number 75 million.

I have no doubt that the increasingly “liberal” evangelical church will follow the lead of the old mainline denominations and decline into numerical irrelevance. Once cut off from the nurturing root of the Word of God, Christian churches always die. There are a number of signs, but easily the most reliable one is the establishment of women in the pulpit. An illuminating exercise is to count the number of “I” references in a female “sermon” versus a male one. I can recall one particularly egregious example at Woodland Hills where I finally gave up and stopped counting as the narcissistic monologue was more about this woman and her feelings than the average psychotherapy session.

Because the US government has been fairly successful in bringing the American church to heel through its establishment of federal licenses, it is interesting to note that while China is attempting to utilize the same tactic, the Chinese Christians are familiar enough with the costs of centralization to resist the state’s attempt to control them.

America is following Europe into a secular post-Christian period. But can be seen in Europe, secular post-Christianity is not sustainable and rapidly leads towards rampant paganism. And, as has been repeatedly demonstrated throughout history, paganism is easily trumped by Christianity. It is an observable historical cycle. Unfortunately, History’s cycles are rinsed with blood.

Why church women don’t like church men

Aunt Haley explains how Churchianity hinders happy marriages:

I’ve noticed that it’s fairly common in evangelical circles for a man to more or less prostrate himself at the feet of his wife’s saintly goodness, proclaiming some mixture of the following:

* I don’t deserve my wife.
* I was a mess before I met my wife.
* If it weren’t for my wife, I don’t know where I’d be right now.
* I don’t know what she sees in me.
* I’m an idiot, but for some reason, she married me.

Among Christian women, humility is an ENORMOUS turn-on and is considered an outward sign of inward maturity…. This “my wife is better than me” attitude is sad. It may be humble on the surface, but it’s really just a big fat ugly DLV.

Note that this is an indictment of Churchianity, not Christianity. There is an important difference. In Christianity, the husband is the head of the household. In Churchianity, the husband is the servant leader, by which it is actually meant that he is a servant rather than a leader. And no man who doesn’t know what he’d do without his wife possesses the confident and muscular faith that sustained the martyrs, crushed paganism, ended global slavery, and changed the world for the better.

Men and women are meant to complement each other. Women need men to help them improve themselves every bit as badly as men need women, if not more so. And yet, are the men of the church ever called upon to help their wives develop intellectually, to broaden their interests outside their personal relations, to maintain themselves physically, and to refrain from being caught up in the destructive spiderweb of gossip? Not that I’ve ever heard.

The abject pedestalization of wives in Churchianity doesn’t even make sense in conventionally omniderigent evangelical terms. If God gave you your wife, then who are you to assert you do not deserve her? Women want to be married to a man who is awesome, so it is an insult to her character, her intelligence, and her quality to claim that you’re some sort of lower being that she has kindly deigned to lift up out of pure altruism. And while it’s probably true that you’re an idiot, given MPAI, the fact of the matter is that she is almost certainly an idiot too. It’s no wonder many women of the church are discontent in their marriages, if their husbands can’t see anything of merit in themselves, how do they expect their wives to do so?

False modesty isn’t humility, it’s a deceitful facade presented by whiny and insecure bitches of both sexes and it has no place in a Christian marriage.

A good reason to change churches

The Blogger Blaster provides an excellent metric to determine whether your church is one worth attending or not:

Lets start by looking at Mothers Day. Now… Sermons on both days have formulas that are almost always followed… but in each case… are slightly different. On mothers day… women will be celebrated and praised to the point of near worship. Mary will be mentioned over and over again. Then… in the sermon… the minister will take some particular positive attribute of mothers… and use it as a lesson… and hold it up as something for everyone to aspire to.

Then Fathers Day comes along. its a whole different story. It often starts with a mens breakfast… where an old man will stand up and read a list of fatherly attributes… and its assumed of course that you don’t meet them… then you are chastised for not meeting them… and challenged to meet them in the future. Then the service rolls around… and everyone will lament the failures in society and blame them on who? Right. Dads. And then the formulaic sermon… of course there will be no mention of Joseph… no… instead the minister takes a negative attribute of males… this morning at my church it was pride… and complains about how it affects the family of fathers… and uses it as a negative example to show people something to avoid.

Let me be perfectly clear. I will never, ever, attend a church that makes a habit of putting women on a pedestal and celebrating female traits while repeatedly demonizing men and castigating male traits. That is the hallmark of a church which has abandoned the worship of God the Father in favor of elevating current societal norms to sacred writ.

Because men have their flaws and engage in sin, it is correct for a pastor to exhort them and hold them accountable. But if your pastor is not capable of holding both men and women to account for their behavior, he should be your ex-pastor.

Mailvox: give to Caesar

JB wonders when it applies:

Not sure if you’ve run into this, but I’ve noticed a pattern when debating a liberal (Christian or not) about taxes and big government. When they get to the point where they have lost the argument, they throw a grenade with the statement, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”.

Now, I’m not one to take the words of Christ lightly. It is true, Jesus did not go out of His way to incite rebellion against Rome, and seemed to endorse the concept of taxation with that statement. However, something doesn’t sit right with the liberal’s logic when they resort to that statement.

I wonder if you or the Ilk have a solid response to the Render Unto Caesar argument.

I usually run into this with regards to taxes. My response is always the same as the response that preceded the advice. “Show me the coin used for paying the tax. Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?” In other words, show me Caesar! So, while you can reasonably use this verse to justify writing a check to assorted dead men or the Federal Reserve, it is a poor argument in support of state or Federal taxation.

Now, it is important to note that it is not any wiser to refuse to pay the tax money demanded by the IRS than it is to refuse to pay the protection money demanded by the Mafia. But it does mean that the Biblical justification doesn’t apply.

As for government, the liberal Christian’s logic breaks down because what applies to a divine Emperor manifestly does not apply to a democracy, not even a constitutional republic in which the democracy is strictly limited. Whereas the imperial subject owes the Emperor nothing but obedience, the citizen of the republic has a duty to ensure that his duly elected government acts legitimately according to the bounds of the republic’s constitution.