This follows on from yesterday’s second post, which was written while waiting for the final flight of the day.
When you look at the comment of Christ to the women of Jerusalem it makes no sense unless you understand that the actions we have done have consequences. That God is allowed to be angry with injustice and evil and to grieve when his people walk away. That our models of God, or our theology, is not God.
I think the rot comes from the top.
All of the mainstream denominations have clergy who are in fact Unitarian Universalists. It’s what is being taught in seminaries and you simply can’t graduate without parroting it. Look for words like “inclusiveness,” “inviting,” “welcoming”, “hospitality” (or worse, “radical hospitality”), and so on. This terms have theological meaning quite at variance with the Gospels. The so-called Covenant of Hospitality is not just non-Gospel, it is a 180 degree reversal of taking the message to the world. The theologians of mainstream denominations have explicitly rejected the Great Commission in favor of taking the world into the church, with observable results today.
The Anglican/Episcopal and Methodist churches share a lot of common history. It’s therefore not surprising to me that they share a common present.
And so we drop into some form of haze, where we walk confused, for there is nothing to guide us. The Anglicans had for guidance not as much the creeds (though they do exist) but instead the Book of Common Prayer. Their strength was liturgy: you may have had difficulties with the formulae, but the formulae got into you. And there liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer was written by those who wer both poets and theologians.
Not now. Instead, the liturgy stinks.
Meanwhile in London, the tube reports indicate how hot it is… pic.twitter.com/pRlk2LVUn4
— Local Auckland (@LocalAuckland) July 2, 2015
The same thing has happened in the credal churches. Among the reformed churches, the need for reformation — which is supposed to be about self-examination and repentance both personally and as a congregation — has become the need to continually reinvent heresies so that the social goal of inclusiveness is met.
As if social goals and the nation matter. Which they do not.
And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus. And there followed him a great multitude of the people and of women who were mourning and lamenting for him. But turning to them Jesus said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
The women of Jerusalem were mourning for Christ. They were protesting, if you will, the decisions of the elite. They were not the elite: they had not damned Christ.
They were of his nation. Yet he prophesies that the nation will be destroyed, and the barren will be thought to be blessed, for she will neither see her children starve (as in Jerusalem) nor have to cut their throats (as in Masada).
The Romans were genocidal, and thorough. When they finished with a rebellious nation, a desert was left. Better a desert than a rebellious people: such was deemed to be a peace by the Romans. Palestine was emptied and resettled by Titus.
What does all this mean? Well, firstly, the kind of white nationalism that exists (mainly in the USA) leaves me cold. Even though I’m white. And Maori nationalism (15%), black nationalism (12%) and La Raza (10%?) I deem as stupid. Almost every male can fight if taught: can these people not count? Have they not learned from either Dixie or the Broderbund? If you are the less populous group in a tribal war, you will lose, even if the other side is less educated, less trained: unless the society you are fighting is rotten.
Secondly, I expect that we will, again be persecuted. Unless we fold. I expect the mainstream churches to fold: I pray that my church does not.
And finally, if the church rots, society soon follows, and rotten societies fall. The decline should not be enjoyed. It should be warned against, and we should rage at the declining of the light.
Perhaps, just perhaps, then a remnant will repent.
_________
For those who follow the blog I am in timezone hell: wordpress says it is 3 AM on Saturday, where I am it is 10 AM on Friday. I will be back on NZ time at the end of next week.
Welcome back to our fair Dominion. 🙂