The fact of the existence of evil troubles many individuals, religious and irreligious alike. Numerous strategies have evolved for dealing with it, from denying it like the Buddhists, enduring it like the Stoics, combating it like the Christians or redefining it like the Marxists. But regardless of the method one chooses, there is observably something to which all of these people from the panoply of religious and philosophical creeds are responding.
Tag: Christianity
Christ is risen
Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.
And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered his words, and returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest.
It was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles. And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not. Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.
– Luke 24: 1-12
WND column
The Christian concept of hell has proven to be a strangely difficult one to accept for a species that has developed the concepts of capitalism, natural selection and the survival of the fittest. And it is an odd world in which metal bands contemplate the theology of damnation in a more sophisticated and intelligent manner than religious ministers – one cannot reasonably call them Christian – of national standing.
NB: this is the TIME magazine article to which I refer in the column.
75 percent
75 percent of the religious persecution around the world is directed at Christians. It is committed by the religious and irreligious alike. Meanwhile, Western liberals wring their hands about nonexistent persecution of Muslims and hunt for anti-semitic Nazis. When the militant arms of the Church of England and the Southern Baptists are openly committing murder without fear of prosecution, then perhaps they’ll have a case. Until then, they should shut up and look at what is happening around the world:
The British branch of the 64-year-old, Vatican-approved organization Aid to the Church in Need today released a report finding that a full 75 percent of religious persecution is currently being carried out against Christians. It further claims that, in two-thirds of the countries, this persecution has worsened. “For millions of Christians around the world,” the report states, “persecution, violence discrimination and suffering are a way of life as they live out their faith.”
Of course, secular society doesn’t care about Christians being persecuted, since a significant portion of it is actively and openly hoping to perform similar persecution itself. But that’s all right, because as before, the persecution will only serve to forge a stronger Church.
The cost of post-Christianity
It is foolish to expect logical consistency from government, much less the media. But note the intrinsic contradiction between what influential members of the British public still believe their government to be and what their government actually proclaims that it is:
Item One: The state-sponsored Equality and Human Rights Commission intervened [in the case of the Johns family being denied foster parent status on the grounds of their Christianity] and argued that it was the duty of the state to protect vulnerable children from becoming “infected” with Judeo-Christian values of sexual morality. The rest is history, and in a startling judgment, the High Court held last Monday that the United Kingdom is a secular state and that Christianity as part of the law is “mere rhetoric.”
Item Two: Prof Simms comes down on the side of the latter [the pro-Libyan intervention position], citing Palmerston: “Our duty – our vocation – is not to enslave, but to set free… we stand at the head of moral, social, and political civilisation… when we see people battling against difficulties and struggling against obstacles in the pursuit of their rights, we may be permitted… if occasion require, to lend them a helping hand.”
Lord Palmerston was twice the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the second time from June 1859 to October 1865. At that time, the United Kingdom was an unequivocally Christian monarchy and Christianity was an integral aspect of its moral, social, and political civilization. Now, according to the High Court, the United Kingdom is Christian in rhetorical name only despite the fact that neither the laws nor the unwritten English constitution have changed. So, the only conclusion is that the United Kingdom no longer stands at the head of moral, social, and political civilization, but has been reduced to following the lead of the totalitarian pagan rulers of Continental Europe.
Britain can’t intervene in Libya because it has neither the ability nor the moral justification for doing so. On what basis would they intervene anyhohw, the inability of Libyans to democratically select their government? That would be ludicrous, considering that the British people have been repeatedly denied the referendum on the sacrifice of their national sovereignty to the European Union that they have been repeatedly promised. Political freedom is a predominantly Christian phenomenon and there is no evidence that it can survive paganism, which naturally gravitates towards totalitarian rule.
Consider the warning of one of the counsels involved:
It is important for Americans to understand these developments, so they can learn from the British experience. The first lesson is the speed and success of the secular ideology in replacing Judeo-Christian freedoms. In 1997, the United Kingdom was a more stable country than the United States; an evolving state with a millennium of religious liberty. If someone had told me then that within little more than a decade, stable Christian households would be deemed unsuitable to foster children, or that Crosses would be banned, or that hate-speech laws would be used to crush the very ideas of dissent, I would not have believed it. I would have been labeled an alarmist if I had expressed views to that avail.
The second factor to recognize is that the terms liberal, diversity, and tolerance are descriptors for a political program which logic and law alone cannot explain. Thirdly, the secular movement is but a variant of the utopian ambitions that have inspired man from the beginning of time. However, the endgame of such programs is always the same
Paul Diamond is exactly correct. The endgame of secular utopianism is always the same. It ends in the gulag, the guillotine, and the gas chamber. But the key point to remember is that however it ends, it always ends, because the Gates of Hell cannot and will not prevail.
We are not alone
An announcement of extraterrestrial life:
We are not alone in the universe — and alien life forms may have a lot more in common with life on Earth than we had previously thought.
That’s the stunning conclusion one NASA scientist has come to, releasing his groundbreaking revelations in a new study in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology…. Though it may be hard to swallow, Hoover is convinced that his findings reveal fossil evidence of bacterial life within such meteorites, the remains of living organisms from their parent bodies — comets, moons and other astral bodies. By extension, the findings suggest we are not alone in the universe, he said.
“I interpret it as indicating that life is more broadly distributed than restricted strictly to the planet earth,” Hoover told FoxNews.com. “This field of study has just barely been touched — because quite frankly, a great many scientist would say that this is impossible.”
If a great many scientists say extraterrestrial is impossible despite the fact that they can’t possibly know with any degree of certainty, we can safely conclude that it will be discovered relatively soon, assuming it hasn’t been already. But I’m less interested in yet another exercise in the foolishness of scientists throwing away their credibility in unscientific opining than I am in this question: would the proven existence of extraterrestrial life tend to support the Christian view of Creation or undermine it? Or would it depend upon the form in which that extraterrestrial life takes?
The interests of the children
Keep this in mind the next time you hear that some insanely unjust decision to take children away from their homes or require ridiculous child support payments was made “in the interest of the children“.
A Christian couple morally opposed to homosexuality today lost a High Court battle over the right to become foster carers. Eunice and Owen Johns, aged 62 and 65, from Oakwood, Derby, went to court after a social worker expressed concerns when they said they could not tell a child a ‘homosexual lifestyle’ was acceptable.
I suppose it makes sense that it is more important for an orphan to be told that homosexuality is okay than to be provided with a loving foster home with Christian parents who uphold Christian moral standards, since they’re probably getting raped by the social workers on a regular basis anyhow. These days, if a divorced man wants to obtain primary custody of his children, his best bet is probably to tell the family court judge that he intends to teach the kiddies positive attitudes about money and homosexuality by forcing them to work as cam whores.
Egypt and the Iraqi Crusade
It would appear to have gang seriously agley:
It’s an irony almost too bitter to bear that George W. Bush, an evangelical Christian fired by a vision of freedom with religious overtones, waged a war of liberation in Iraq that led to the uprooting of the country’s Christians. And did almost nothing to prevent it, or even remark upon it. Iraq’s Christians are the collateral damage of the country’s post-Saddam revolution….
Before the invasion, roughly 1.4 million Christians lived in Iraq. About half of them have fled, with many more sure to follow. For a community that dates back almost to the inception of Christianity, this is nothing short of a historic cataclysm.
Once more there are reports circulating that Hosni Mubarak has stepped down again and this time they are apparently correct. There are also 8 million Coptic Christians now living in Egypt. Will the world demonstrate even a tenth of the concern for them that it still shows – or at least feigns to show – for six million Jews who died more than 60 years ago?
Kristof fails to grok Christianity
I often find it amazing how the various modern perversions of Christianity don’t get it wrong so much as turn it completely on its head:
The National Catholic Reporter newspaper put it best: “Just days before Christians celebrated Christmas, Jesus got evicted.” Yet the person giving Jesus the heave-ho in this case was not a Bethlehem innkeeper. Nor was it an overzealous mayor angering conservatives by pulling down Christmas decorations. Rather, it was a prominent bishop, Thomas Olmsted, stripping St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix of its affiliation with the Roman Catholic diocese.
The hospital’s offense? It had terminated a pregnancy to save the life of the mother. The hospital says the 27-year-old woman, a mother of four children, would almost certainly have died otherwise.
Bishop Olmsted initially excommunicated a nun, Sister Margaret McBride, who had been on the hospital’s ethics committee and had approved of the decision. That seems to have been a failed attempt to bully the hospital into submission, but it refused to cave and continues to employ Sister Margaret. Now the bishop, in effect, is excommunicating the entire hospital — all because it saved a woman’s life.
Unsurprisingly, the New York Times columnist betrays that he has absolutely no understanding of one of the core teachings of Christianity, the very commandment that Jesus gives his disciples. Christianity is not about saving lives, especially not at the expense of others. It is about sacrificing one’s life for others, something that the mother, the nun, and the hospital actually committed murder in order to avoid doing.
This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
The bishop did right to excommunicate those who killed a child in order to potentially save the life of its mother. And if we lived in a moral society, the state would do right to prosecute them.
Mailvox: is there a doctrine in the house?
Mats laments a church in the downward spiral:
Another church service, another feminist promotion. Well, not hardcore feminism, but the notion of a service with ONLY women singers, ONLY women motiffs, and specially, a female “preacher” was enough for me to walk away before the sermon.
I really don’t mind it when I see a woman take the pulpit. That’s when I know that I no longer have to bother attending that church anymore, as it’s only a matter of time before they abandon every other principle of Christian doctrine. It might make for some interesting research to track when women are first permitted leadership positions in a church against the church’s congregation size and the abandonment of specific doctrinal positions.