Tag: Christianity

When life is like Blasphemous Rumors

I don’t fault those who find it difficult to believe in God due to tragic events, particularly those that tend to smack of the Divine having a sick sense of humor:

Dennis Byrd, a former Jets defensive lineman best known for battling back from a serious spinal injury and recovering to walk again, has died at the age of 50. Byrd was killed in a car crash in Claremore, Oklahoma, today.

According to Fox 23, Byrd was driving down the highway when his vehicle was struck head on by another vehicle, which had crossed the center line. A 12-year-old passenger in Byrd’s vehicle was hospitalized, as was the 17-year-old boy driving the vehicle that hit Byrd’s vehicle. Byrd was pronounced dead at the scene.

A second-round draft pick of the Jets in 1989, Byrd played four NFL seasons before suffering a serious neck injury in a collision with a teammate. Byrd was paralyzed and his career was over, but after lengthy physical therapy he was able to walk again. At the Jets’ home opener in 1993, Byrd walked to the middle of the field to represent his team in the pregame coin toss, and there he was given the team’s Most Inspirational Player Award, which is now known as the Dennis Byrd Award.

In the 1980s, Depeche Mode wrote what may be the greatest philosophical lyric ever written in pop music.

I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumors
But I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor
And when I die
I expect to find Him laughing

As an indifferent agnostic, that fairly well described my religious perspective before I became a Christian. But that is why it is so important to understand the correct application of the Problem of Evil, and to grasp what it means for the world to be fallen, why it is necessary for Christians to be in the world, but not of it, and why the Word became flesh and died on the Cross.

Depeche Mode was right, in a sense, though it is not God who has the sick and sadistic sense of humor, but the Prince of this world. Neither God nor Jesus Christ rule over the Silent Planet, and they are not the architects of human misfortune.

I do, however, contra Umberto Eco, firmly believe that God possesses a sense of humor. I have sensed it. And one cannot read the New Testament without recognizing that Jesus was almost brutally sarcastic.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.

Retreat is pointless

Christian organizations might as well learn to start standing firmly on their principles, because you either use them or you lose them:

One of the largest evangelical organizations on college campuses nationwide has told its 1,300 staff members they will be fired if they personally support gay marriage or otherwise disagree with its newly detailed positions on sexuality starting on Nov. 11.


InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA says that it will start a process for “involuntary terminations” for any staffer who comes forward to disagree with its positions on human sexuality, which holds that any sexual activity outside of a husband and wife is immoral.

One of Rod Dreher’s commenters adds an observation.


Federal law makes it pretty much impossible to take a stance along the lines of, “This is what we believe, but out of compassion and pragmatism we’re willing to be flexible for a certain amount of time, with certain people, and/or in certain situations.” Either you have a blanket policy that applies to all people in all instances, or federal courts will rule that you don’t “really” have a principled position and invalidate the broader policy because of the exceptions.

So, do the right thing. Don’t make exceptions. Tolerance is not a Christian virtue, it is the first step along the path to destruction.

Mailvox: standing with atheists

An atheist explains his contempt for cuckservative Churchianity:

I am a man living in Alabama who has never believed in Santa Clause or God. My family and most of my peers are rabid evangelicals.

For 28 years I have been preached to in a desperate attempt to save me from hell. The only thing I have seen is a legion of cowards using soft rhetoric to make their ideas more palatable to the ignorant fools who begin throwing their money at the Church. The people who beg me to follow their creed are mocked by children with the most rudimentary logic as they abandon the commands of their God and whore themselves to anyone who will pay them.

I will never count myself among such feckless cowards.

This does not change my decision to stand by Christians and fight the filth this cesspool of a nation is surrendering itself to. I have one thing to offer my Christian brothers, I will die next to them inflicting this on this enemy: an animal hatred of of the trash you have allowed to undermine the country which has allowed me to live my life without repression.

If you do not succeed in your goal it will not only be me who perishes. You will cry out to your God as the evil you believed he would save you from brutally shows you what it is to be ruined.

I’d rather stand by an atheist like him than the Churchians who sell out their neighbors for worldly approbation in the name of a counterfeit Gospel. But he really should know better than to try to characterize Christian theology on our behalf. Jesus saves souls. He doesn’t save nations. If men want to save their nations, or their civilization, I expect they’ll have to do it on their own.

In such matters, God appears to be most inclined to help those who follow His laws and help themselves.

The mantra of inclusiveness

The fact that this church even feels the need to hold a hearing on this matter is an indication of how hopelessly converged it is. And in answer to the question posed by the headline, no, an atheist cannot lead a Christian church:

The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a dynamic, activist minister with a loyal following at her Protestant congregation in suburban Toronto. She is also an outspoken atheist.

“We don’t talk about God,” Vosper said in an interview, describing services at her West Hill United Church, adding that it’s time the church gave up on “the idolatry of a theistic god.”

Vosper’s decision to reject God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and to turn her church into a haven for nonbelievers “looking for a community that will help them create meaningful lives without God” has become too much even for the liberal-minded United Church of Canada.

The United Church, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, has begun an extraordinary process that could end up stripping Vosper of her rights to continue as a minister. Last week, a special committee of the Toronto Conference of the United Church requested that a formal hearing be convened by the General Council of the United Church to determine her fate as a minister. That followed a review of  Vosper’s actions by a separate committee.

“In our opinion, she is not suitable to continue in ordained ministry because she does not believe in God, Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit. Ms. Vosper does not recognize the primacy of scripture, she will not conduct the sacraments, and she is no longer in essential agreement with the statement of doctrine of The United Church of Canada,” the committee said in a report released recently….

Like other mainstream denominations, the United Church of Canada, founded in 1925 as a merger of several denominations, has seen its numbers fall sharply in recent years. It reported having 436,292 members at the end of 2014, less than half the 1,063,951 it had at its peak in 1964. But a spokeswoman notes that the Canadian census of 2011, which has a broader definition, counted more than 2 million “adherents” of the United Church.

“It’s become a question of the church’s public integrity,” the Rev. Don Schweitzer, a professor of theology at St. Andrew’s College in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and editor of a history of the United Church, said of the dispute with Vosper. “It’s tough on the United Church because we’ve created this mantra of inclusiveness and now it’s been tested. It goes against the grain to tell somebody that you have to leave.”

Inclusivity and tolerance are NOT Christian principles. They are quite literally the opposite of Christian principles. They are social justice principles, which is to say, they are among the many principles acceptable to Hell.

The Devil is most inclusive and extraordinarily tolerant. You can do whatever you want, whenever you want, to whomever you want. And all it will cost you is your soul.

Empty-handed at the OK Corral

Not bringing a religion to a clash of civilizations is like not bringing a gun to a gunfight. Every major civilization has had its basis in a core religion.

Consider these three quotes from Sam Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations:

  1. The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The problem for Islam is not the CIA or the U.S. Department of Defense. It is the West, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture throughout the world. These are the basic ingredients that fuel conflict between Islam and the West.
  2. Blood, language, religion, way of life, were what the Greeks had in common and what distinguished them from the Persians and other non-Greeks. Of all the objective elements which define civilizations, however, the most important usually is religion, as the Athenians emphasized. To a very large degree, the major civilizations in human history have been closely identified with the world’s great religions; and people who share ethnicity and language but differ in religion may slaughter each other, as happened in Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, and the Subcontinent.
  3. Religion is a central defining characteristic of civilizations, and, as Christopher Dawson said, “the great religions are the foundations on which the great civilizations rest.” Of Weber’s five “world religions,” four—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Confucianism—are associated with major civilizations. The fifth, Buddhism, is not.
Now, one can blithely try to wave away Huntington’s civilizational perspective and his thesis, but considering how The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order was published in 1996 and has proven to be not merely far more insightful and predictive than Fukuyama’s End of History thesis or any other conceptual model, one would have to be grossly ignorant to do so.
So, if we accept the idea that Western civilization and Islamic civilization are in conflict, what must we logically conclude from the three quotes provided?
  1. The decline of the West is the direct result of the decline of Christianity in the West, both religious and institutional.
  2. The growing power of Islam in the West cannot be halted by secularism, white nationalism, or any sub-civilization-level force.
  3. The preservation of the West requires a revival of Christianity.
  4. The preservation of the West requires the abandonment of some, though not all, secular values, beginning with the freedom of religion, that conflict with the restoration of Christianity
There is considerably more that can be concluded from this particular perspective, but I expect most people, even of an Alt-West persuasion, will struggle to accept just those four inescapable conclusions.

The essential evil of globalism

The Church is finally beginning to speak out against the religion of Anti-Christ:

Prominent theologians and scholars are saying this week that while globalism may be a buzzword this election season, too few understand the demonic forces driving this ideology.

As The New York Times reported Monday, until relatively recently it was rare to hear people referred to as “globalists” but the label is more common now. And while many globalists claim to have the interests of the entire world at heart, the irony is that they have become a tribe of sorts; and they are a wealthy, elite, and powerful tribe for whom national borders are an impediment to their agenda.

While many definitions for globalism exist, a wide chasm separates 1) necessary global exchanges in an increasingly interconnected world, like trade, legal immigration, and the cooperation and sharing of ideas across borders, and 2) globalism as a secular humanistic religion of sorts that envisons a one-world government.

For the second definition of globalism, such views are antithetical to a Christian worldview, according to some, even as the Church itself is global and the Kingdom of God is not constrained by national borders.

“A major objection to globalism from a spiritual and biblical point of view is that many of the globalists are pushing for a global value system,” said Wallace Henley, senior associate pastor of 2nd Baptist Church in Houston, Texas in a Tuesday phone interview with The Christian Post.

Henley, who has written recently on CP about national borders further explained that there is an anti-Christ spirit at work in the world that opposes the Kingdom of Christ, which is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

“The Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ is the highest form of civilization. The anti-civilization represented by anti-Christ is the opposite of that. So if the kingdom of Christ is righteousness, the anti-civilization is evil and injustice. If the kingdom of Christ is peace, the Kingdom of anti-Christ is conflict. If the Kingdom of Christ is joy in the Holy Spirit, anti-civilization is misery.”

In a September 4 American Thinker article titled, “Globalism: the Religion of Empire” theologian Fay Voshell noted similarly that “[l]ike the Christian vision of the universal Kingdom of God, the religion of secular globalism claims universality, but is an earthly minded substitute for the Church universal. The Christian vision sees the Church universal as God’s kingdom ruling the earth. The religion of globalism sees an earthly, utopian world order in which all men pay allegiance to elite priests who rule over a World City without national borders.”

Globalism is the heart of all that is wicked. Free trade, economic growth, the free movement of peoples, the United Nations, the international agreements, Davos Man, world peace, coexistence, immigration, and the New World Order, all of it is part of the evil sum total. Remember, if it didn’t come in an attractive package, very few would fall for it.

“Self-righteous Churchian Pharisaism”

Scott Morefield annihilates the feeble anti-Trump arguments of the Republican Party’s Prince of Cucks, Erick Erickson on WND:

Erick doubles down on the insanity as the column devolves into self-righteous Churchian Pharisaism while ultimately rejecting both of the choices God Himself has obviously put before us.

And the logic he uses to do so is horribly, fatally flawed.

Erickson contrasts Clinton’s “tyranny of the minority” with Trump’s “tyranny of the majority” and his “corrupting the virtuous and fostering hatred, racism, and dangerous strains of nationalism.”

Since when, Erick, is putting America and Americans above globalist interests a “dangerous strain of nationalism”?

Trumpism, the movement Trump represents, can essentially be defined as taking our country back from foreign, globalist, corporate and establishment interests by securing our border and limiting immigration, establishing a fair, sensible trade policy that protects American jobs, and limiting foreign interventions overseas, among other things.

What could possibly be wrong with that?

By constantly bringing up the “racist” canard, people like Erickson not only lose credibility – because there is not one single shred of evidence that Donald Trump is a racist – but they insult, like Hillary Clinton did, the millions of Americans who passionately support Trump. It’s tired, old and increasingly ineffective, and yet just like the left, who see a “raaacist” behind every tree, hand-wringers like Erickson continue to deploy it to serve their rhetorical ends.

Further, the attacks on the supposed hypocrisy of prominent Christian theologian Wayne Grudem are beyond the pale, especially given the fact that Grudem made it clear that he did not support Trump in the primaries, just as he didn’t support Giuliani in 2012. However, he most certainly would have supported Giuliani over Obama had he won the primaries, just as he is supporting Trump now, with good reason.

Erickson uses the fact that a fellow parishioner at his church tried to make the argument for Trump based on other flawed men in the Bible God has used, like David, Abraham and Samson, as evidence that Trump has “poisoned” the church from within. He believes that while Clinton will do “long-term damage to the country,” Trump will “do far more damage to the church.”

Ironically, Erickson later writes of the church, “But Christ has already risen, so the true church is in no danger of falling. The gates of hell shall not prevail.”

So, which is it, Erick? If you believe that Christ will protect and keep His church, surely you aren’t worried about a mortal human like Donald Trump wrecking it, are you?

You see, unlike our country, the church IS, at root, a spiritual institution impervious to the machinations of man.

It’s really remarkable what a horrible, and horribly dishonest individual Erick Erickson is. It does not speak well of those Christians who insist on continuing to pay attention to the man and his incessant posturing.

Better late than never

Ted Cruz endorses Donald Trump:

This election is unlike any other in our nation’s history. Like many other voters, I have struggled to determine the right course of action in this general election.

In Cleveland, I urged voters, “please, don’t stay home in November. Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket whom you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”

After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.

I’ve made this decision for two reasons. First, last year, I promised to support the Republican nominee. And I intend to keep my word.

One can imagine the tear tracks being carved through the Cheetohs grime covering Glenn Beck’s face. I wonder how long it will take the cuckiest of cucks, Erick Erickson, to follow Cruz’s lead and reverse course considering that he just planted his flag again earlier today.

The polling has drawn ever closer. More and more people wonder if those of us who are NeverTrump should finally yield knowing that we can beat Hillary Clinton. I am in an odd position. I am mindful that should Trump win, the Republican establishment will blame people like me for giving rise to Trump. Likewise, I know if Trump loses, the Republican establishment will blame people like me for giving rise to Trump and Trump supporters will blame people like me for his loss. I suppose I should say not that I’m in an odd position, but that I am in a no-win position.

With Donald Trump’s rise in the polls and the increasingly competitive nature of the race, it is time to reconsider my opposition to Trump. After all, I view Hillary Clinton’s candidacy as anti-American….

I think Hillary Clinton will do lasting damage to the country. I cannot vote for her.

Having reconsidered my opposition to Trump, I think Donald Trump will do lasting damage to the witness of the Church in America and I therefore cannot vote for him.

I am without a candidate. I just cannot vote for either one. Whichever is elected, it is God’s will and as his holy and inerrant scripture commands, I will pray for my President as I pray for the current President. But I will not harm my witness nor risk Trump’s soul to serve my political desires.

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. I do not believe a vote for either candidate glorifies God and I am certain neither advances his kingdom.

Dude, you voted for Captain Underoos. You voted for a bloody MORMON. You don’t get to play the “oh, I’m an evangelical, I’m too holy to care about my country, I’m voting for God” card after that. What the fuck is “the witness of the Church in America” anyhow? Lesbian Unitarians performing gay marriages while the gay Catholic seminarians chase the altar boys and women talk about their mutually submitted husbands in the pulpits of the Protestant churches as the only male pastors left are too busy apologizing for slavery to preach the Gospel?

Erick Erickson is exactly the sort of Christian that gave me an allergy to Christianity growing up. All that passive-aggressive, faux-righteous babble designed to justify himself reminds me of every smarmy high school guy who was going to a Bible college to pursue a career in youth ministry because it was the only way he could hang around high school girls.

The true Christian teaching on immigration

Contra the current churchian and papal perspectives, the traditional Christian teaching on immigration is that the common good of the nation must be considered first, not whatever happens to most benefit the potential immigrant. This analysis of St. Thomas Aquinas’s work makes clear what was repeatedly demonstrated in Cuckservative, which is that what churchians are doing with regards to immigration is not Christian at all, but are the works of a false faith that is intrinsically anti-Christian.

Immigration is a modern problem and so some might think that the medieval Saint Thomas would have no opinion about the problem. And yet, he does. One has only to look in his masterpiece, the Summa Theologica, in the second part of the first part, question 105, article 3 (I-II, Q. 105, Art. 3). There one finds his analysis based on biblical insights that can add to the national debate. They are entirely applicable to the present.

Saint Thomas: “Man’s relations with foreigners are twofold: peaceful, and hostile: and in directing both kinds of relation the Law contained suitable precepts.”

Commentary: In making this affirmation, Saint Thomas affirms that not all immigrants are equal. Every nation has the right to decide which immigrants are beneficial, that is, “peaceful,” to the common good. As a matter of self-defense, the State can reject those criminal elements, traitors, enemies and others who it deems harmful or “hostile” to its citizens.

The second thing he affirms is that the manner of dealing with immigration is determined by law in the cases of both beneficial and “hostile” immigration. The State has the right and duty to apply its law.

Saint Thomas: “For the Jews were offered three opportunities of peaceful relations with foreigners. First, when foreigners passed through their land as travelers. Secondly, when they came to dwell in their land as newcomers. And in both these respects the Law made kind provision in its precepts: for it is written (Exodus 22:21): ’Thou shalt not molest a stranger [advenam]’; and again (Exodus 22:9): ’Thou shalt not molest a stranger [peregrino].’”

Commentary: Here Saint Thomas acknowledges the fact that others will want to come to visit or even stay in the land for some time. Such foreigners deserved to be treated with charity, respect and courtesy, which is due to any human of good will. In these cases, the law can and should protect foreigners from being badly treated or molested.

Saint Thomas: “Thirdly, when any foreigners wished to be admitted entirely to their fellowship and mode of worship. With regard to these a certain order was observed. For they were not at once admitted to citizenship: just as it was law with some nations that no one was deemed a citizen except after two or three generations, as the Philosopher says (Polit. iii, 1).”

Commentary: Saint Thomas recognizes that there will be those who will want to stay and become citizens of the lands they visit. However, he sets as the first condition for acceptance a desire to integrate fully into what would today be considered the culture and life of the nation.

A second condition is that the granting of citizenship would not be immediate. The integration process takes time. People need to adapt themselves to the nation. He quotes the philosopher Aristotle as saying this process was once deemed to take two or three generations. Saint Thomas himself does not give a timeframe for this integration, but he does admit that it can take a long time.

Saint Thomas: “The reason for this was that if foreigners were allowed to meddle with the affairs of a nation as soon as they settled down in its midst, many dangers might occur, since the foreigners not yet having the common good firmly at heart might attempt something hurtful to the people.”

Commentary: The common sense of Saint Thomas is certainly not politically correct but it is logical. The theologian notes that living in a nation is a complex thing. It takes time to know the issues affecting the nation. Those familiar with the long history of their nation are in the best position to make the long-term decisions about its future. It is harmful and unjust to put the future of a place in the hands of those recently arrived, who, although through no fault of their own, have little idea of what is happening or has happened in the nation. Such a policy could lead to the destruction of the nation.

As an illustration of this point, Saint Thomas later notes that the Jewish people did not treat all nations equally since those nations closer to them were more quickly integrated into the population than those who were not as close. Some hostile peoples were not to be admitted at all into full fellowship due to their enmity toward the Jewish people.

These are some of the thoughts of Saint Thomas Aquinas on the matter of immigration based on biblical principles. It is clear that immigration must have two things in mind: the first is the nation’s unity; and the second is the common good.

Immigration should have as its goal integration, not disintegration or segregation. The immigrant should not only desire to assume the benefits but the responsibilities of joining into the full fellowship of the nation. By becoming a citizen, a person becomes part of a broad family over the long term and not a shareholder in a joint stock company seeking only short-term self-interest.

Secondly, Saint Thomas teaches that immigration must have in mind the common good; it cannot destroy or overwhelm a nation.

This explains why so many Americans experience uneasiness caused by massive and disproportional immigration. Such policy artificially introduces a situation that destroys common points of unity and overwhelms the ability of a society to absorb new elements organically into a unified culture. The common good is no longer considered.

Mailvox: when your church converges

A reader in the Bay Area wonders what his options are:

I went to church today and I’ve been worried for a long time. There have been signs. The original church was extremely intellectual, led by a couple men I respect who learned Greek and Aramaic personally, research like none other and present the Bible in a way I’d never seen in regular church services. Two years ago one of those men was forced out, though I didn’t see it at the time because he “left for a new position in another church”. He was replaced by young, hipster types leading everything. The lead pastor, whom I also respect, has started backing off, only preaching once a month or so, doing other things while those younger “hipper” people take over.

A few months ago they started having a woman lead services. They brought in and merged with a chuch from a black area, brought in a lot more minority populations.

I noticed my wife, who’s heavily involved in those small groups, started getting really passionate about Good Samaritan type projects and we had a few fights about how I was saying they were scams, as it was a lot of raising money type of deals.

Today it culminated where they actually brought in one of the 49ers who is protesting with Kaepernick and did a sermon on how the “disciples were diverse”, and he gave a shpiel about how him and Kaepernick are going to “change the community, because cops can do better, we can do better.” Full SJW lie with zero biblical basis. They opened with a video about multi-racial couples and talking about race and probably mentioned diversity 50 times over the course of the sermon.

I walked out during the 49er bit.  Now my wife is very very heavily involved in the smaller groups of the church. I grew up with a number of people so the prospect of leaving is like cutting off an arm. What do I do? Is leaving the only thing I can do?

Yes. It’s time to leave. Do not discuss it with your wife. It’s not something to negotiate; either you are the spiritual leader of the family or she is. Leave and find a new church. She may follow your lead, or she may not, but that’s her responsibility, not yours.

Your responsibility is to lead the way. And the church you describe no longer serves the Lord, it serves the spirit of the world.

You were worried because your spirit was picking up on the false spirit that entered the church. Now your mind knows what your spirit already knew. The fact that the good pastor was forced out is a strong indicator that you are dealing with some knowingly evil people here, it’s not a series of unfortunate coincidences.