It is Friday, so it is time for some quotes. The theme comes from Ray’s comment today, which deserves to take pride of place.

to this world, God is a Terrorist

and so are his servants

that’s why the churches, states, and Almighty People of this planet hate and oppress His servants, whether it’s 3000 b.c. or 2013 a.d.

note also the extremely unusual presence of Father himself at the Transfigurative pivot-point between the OT and NT, demonstrating to human witnesses the consubstantiality of Moses and Elijah with Christ, the Sonship precedence of Jeshua, and the expressed satisfaction of Father with Jeshua

the full spectrum of the OT prophets is carried in Christ, from extreme to extreme, as exemplified in these representative two — the fire of Elijah and the ice of Moses — utterly opposite souls, personalities, and characters, yet united seamlessly in love of Christ

people only recall Moses in his power, but he was one of the meekest, most humble persons who ever lived (a big reason why God cherishes him so much)

this planet, and amerika in particular, is about to learn that Jeshua is just as much lion as lamb

it’s already being told, but is too proud, selfish, and stubborn to hear

Well, Ray is even blunter than I am, which is something to savour. If you are of Christ, the world is your enemy. You are a subversive. Your arguments will be seen as either too stupid (and condescended to) or too truthful (and therefore labeled either as hateful or inappropriate). But the first thing is you must be of Christ, for it is a fearful to meet the unveiled God of creation but through the filter of Christ.

So the world pretends Christ does not exist and stays in the dark. And that will lead to the destruction of each person, as Elspeth points out.

I also realized how often it sounds around the sphere as if we are attempting to do the exact same thing as the secular liberals: create a ____topia.

Marriage -topia, sex-topia, male-topia, white-topia (Not me of course LOL), game-topia, trad-topia. I could go on but you get my point.

The only way to accomplish this (as the liberals have figured out), is to enact and enforce rules that everyone must succumb to them. Some of these are overt and enforceable laws, Others are politically correct codes of behavior that are subtly enforced until they become the norm.

So we decided that if we make everyone succumb to the Christian/traditional code of morality, all will be well. The problem is that nowhere in the New Testaments do we see the Messiah or apostles concerned with anything about the lifestyles of those outside of the faith. The only concern in for their souls. They knew that with repentance and an experience with Christ comes a change in behavior.

We seem obsessed with how their degeneracy is affecting our lives and comfort while showing no concern for their souls. This of course, says something about the state of our souls.

And Bruce Charlton reinforces this.

The human heart, in its natural state (in our childhood, and among most people inhabiting simpler and better societies) is open and warm – yet in a world full of evil, in a world where we are bombarded with evil and where Good is mocked, subverted and attacked unceasingly – there is a strong tendency to harden and close the heart as self-protection.

Indeed, the temptation to harden and close may prove irresistible, except when there is a strong Christian faith (most other religions do not value an open and warm heart).

A Christian must strive to live by love, but a hard-closed heart makes this impossible.

Not difficult: impossible.

*

If your heart is hard and closed, and you are content with this situation or perhaps even pride yourself on your toughness and power to resist influence – then you are not a Christian; and it does not matter what you do, what rules you follow, nor what you profess.

From a Christian perspective, if society is ruled by those with closed and hardened hearts who do not acknowledge nor try to remedy this; then it is a hellish state, and it does not matter much what the rules are nor who does the ruling.

*

We are not allowed to protect ourselves from the evil of the world by closing ourselves off from it and making ourselves indifferent to it – and if we succeed in this aim of autonomy, this carries its own punishment of absolute alienation and utter aloneness.

The only permissible defense against evil, and the only one which works over the long haul, is to maintain the heart as open and warm, childlike; but to block the access of evil by love – this love comes by grace (undeserved) from God if we allow it.

People must be realistic, they need to be tough – but this is not a legitimate end in itself, and if tough-realism is adopted as an end in itself it is merely a shortcut to evil.

How does this work? Ray is correct: this world is damned and if you assign your loyalty to your nation, to your tribe, to your extended family, or to any ideology you will eventually be in despair for all of these will fail.

All of them. No nation last forever, no dynasty, and no ideology.

But if we remain open, do good, and love… there in lies terror. For the instruments of the state are not there. We are not using force — either directly like the tyrants of old or indirectly as the Gramscian revolutionaries do. We are not micromanaging everyone’s life.

We are not stopping anyone speaking. We are not allowing others to stop us speaking.

We are relying that good speech will drive out bad speech, without censorship.
We are relying on love driving out hate, without force.

For censorship and force and fear will die. Faith, hope and love will survive. And those three, to the ungodly, are terrible.