We have rejected the disciplines of the Almighty for the Mall.

Keoni Galt wrote yesterday about repetition. About writing a post and then deleting it, because it has been said before. And then, in the middle of his discussion about the consequences of blogging for five odd years — which has been a self education and the development of critical thinking, he drops in this paragraph.

This is why Christianity had to be subverted, marginalized, feminized and expunged from the public discourse of mass media society (are you ready for the upcoming Rabbits and chocolate eggs day?!?!). Christianity promotes family as the foundation of society. Happily married folks make happy families that breed too many children.

Happy people surrounded by family and friends, and who live a life in which they embrace faith in a higher power, don’t buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have, to try and fill that hollow emptiness inside. They don’t look to the Government to provide them with cradle-to-grave direction, sustenance and subsistence.

The government is a jealous God. And yes, I have said that before.

In fact, I say lots of things multiple times. repetition is good. It is how I learnt my times tables, neuroanatomy and biochemistry. By rote. I memorized them. It is why in a few minutes I will play scales. It is why I go to the gym. Because muscle memory and intellectual memory is reinforced by repetition.

Paul had no qualms. He was happy to write the same things, over and over, because he thought like an athlete.

Philippians 3:1-14

¹Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord.

To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it is a safeguard.
²Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh! ³For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh — ⁴even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh.
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: ⁵circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

⁷Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. ⁸More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. ¹⁰I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, ¹¹if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

¹²Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. ¹³Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

You see, our lives is made up of the habits we make. So we need to continually refine. We need to continually not reinforce our bad habits (Keoni is correct. The Mall encourages anomie, in the hope we will spend what we do not have. The financial press encourages fear, in the hope we will buy a superannuation fund (401 k for your Americans) and the alt financial press encourages fear, in the hope we will put our savings into gold). Let alone those who sell pornography — visual (which the feminists hate) and written (which they love) in the hope that will assuage our loneliness.

Instead, we should work — and work out, and spend time together, and worship our LORD, and be content to live a quiet life. For that is good.

Consider our sister who has gone to visit her dying grandmother… she says about her (in part)

Mentally..she doesn’t seem to be aware that there isn’t much hope left as she is trying get nourishment despite the cancer blocking her throat. She says she has to stay alive to pay her bills. I think she is convinced that God is a Fiscal Conservative and will damn her for debt. We keep having to reassure her that her bills are taken care of as I can’t seem to convince her that Rush Limbaugh is not Gods representative on earth.

This should make us weep. The great virtues of restraint, modesty (of actions) and independence reduced to fear, duty and talk radio. We all need to pray for this women and those like her who are facing the final challenge without peace.

For they need to get rid of their mental junk. (They are going to lose the physical junk anyway: we enter this world naked and we leave with little more). The reward is not the number of toys you have. or being a cheerful consumer on the road to perdition. The reward is the grace of God.

Our sister is quite prepared to talk about salvation with this woman: pray for them both.

And pray for us all, for our society has rejected the disciplines of the Almighty for the mall. That never ends well.