Travel… I am up early as I need to be on a shuttle, to the airport, then Hong Kong to London to Vienna. I will sleep in 30 hours. Pray for my temper, folks.

One of the things I see in Hong Kong and I quite like is that the place is made friendly for little kids. Not by any barriers or safety netting, but by everybody, on the street, looking out for the little ones. Schoolkids can walk home and let themselves in — and as the apartments are small, most people eat and play in public places. Despite the ugliness of the buildings, beauty is cherished — in the gardens and in the way people care for each other. The Chinese culture has many things that are challenging and difficult in it — and I do not mean eating chicken heads. But they have preserved the ideas of helping each other, and family. For in Hong Kong there is no welfare state.

Now to today’s topics. When I was a kid I used to sing the first verse of what is a not bad poem, but only having the first verse misses the point. Jesus is gentle. He seeks the will of God over his own: he is meek. But mild?

Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild Charles Wesley

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, Look upon a little child;
Pity my simplicity, Suffer me to come to Thee.

Fain I would to Thee be brought, Dearest God, forbid it not;
Give me, dearest God, a place In the Kingdom of Thy grace.

Put Thy hands upon my head, Let me in Thine arms be stayed,
Let me lean upon Thy breast, Lull me, lull me, Lord to rest.

Hold me fast in Thine embrace, Let me see Thy smiling face,
Give me, Lord, Thy blessings give, Pray for me, and I shall live.

Lamb of God, I look to Thee, Thou shalt my example be;
Thou art gentle, meek, and mild, Thou wast once a little child.

Fain I would be as Thou art, Give me Thy obedient heart;
Thou art pitiful and kind, Let me have Thy loving mind.

Let me, above all, fulfil God my heavenly Father’s will,
Never His good Spirit grieve; Only to His glory live.

Thou didst live to God alone, Thou didst never seek Thine own,
Thou Thyself didst never please: God was all Thy happiness.

Loving Jesus, gentle Lamb, In Thy gracious hands I am;
Make me, Saviour, what Thou art, Live Thyself within my heart.

I shall then show forth Thy praise, Serve Thee all my happy days;
Then the world shall always see Christ, the Holy Child, in me.

Great poem for Kids. Teaching Kids about Christ as a child, however, has some problems, because there words are that he obeyed his parents and greew in wisdom, stature, and in favour of God and Man. That’s about it. You can make anything out of that.

But you cannot make anything out of his words. For his teaching, to our soft ears (did you note that Charels Wesley gets the kids to sing they will fulfil God’s will and do their duty where they are placed) Jesus is not mild but hot and spicy. He damns people. He confronts. It is no wonder that the socialist state say he is inconsistent with their values, because he is: he demands a truthfulness they cannot tolerate.

Matthew 12:33-42

³³“Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. ³⁴You brood of vipers! How can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. ³⁵The good person brings good things out of a good treasure, and the evil person brings evil things out of an evil treasure. ³⁶I tell you, on the day of judgement you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter; ³⁷for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

³⁸Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” ³⁹But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. ⁴⁰For just as Jonah was for three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth. ⁴¹The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here! ⁴²The queen of the South will rise up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here!”

The history of the Church includes the mass conversions of people by missionary effort and then the slow strangulation of that nation’s church by the culture, as the people in that nation try to ignore the fact that Christ is in the church and to abandon the Church is to abandon Christ.

You can see that in Europe, in Russia and Finland, in South America, in Africa and the Pacific, and in Asia — which was the last place to “flip” Christian — at the cost of three generations of missionary sacrifice and martyrdom. You can also see the culture strangling the Church in Europe, where the societies who sent missionaries to Africa, Asia and the Pacific Nations now get missionaries going to the new Pagans of Europe.

And the European State resisting this, for it is indeed a jealous ideology, a jealous God. In this time, we are told to lie to preserve ourselves, and if we lie to others we find that we are lying to ourselves and we lose our spiritual sensitivity. No wonder we turn to forms of lethe (the pleasures of the flesh (food, alcohol (or stronger) and women) or delude ourselves that if yell loud enough or want something strongly enough it will happen.

But that is not the case, Gerald Manly Hopkins wrote this poem, and the video is worth seeing. For the truth within is beautiful and hateful: and in the time when we had moral fibre it was considered fit for children, not hate speech to be hidden from men.

(note the song starts about 50s in)