Railway memorial, Otago Rail Trail
One of the things that we are being accused of, all to often is that we judge overmuch. That we are in some manner mean, and that we are not allowed to damn the arrogance. That we are all alike, and that we should just be able to get along.
As if we are not fallen. As if we are not in bodies: we do not have to deal with biology. As if we are not male and female. We forget our limitations.
We have this fantasy — particularly women — that their innate charm, their DNA, will allow the greatest monster to fall in love with them and their natural virtue will make all right. That men are sort of easy. The real women can charm and tame Monsters (Beauty and the Beast) or the Undead Evil (Twilight, and half the remance or urban fantasy in most bookshops. You cannot sell any science fiction with rivets in it no more).
And this is wrong. For we are all fallen. We judge and correct each other because we are aiming to follow the teachings of Christ, who makes Moses look easy. And this is no game with a restart button: we cannot spawn.
12The LORD said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.” 13So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God. 14To the elders he had said, “Wait here for us, until we come to you again; for Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a dispute may go to them.”
15Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. 16The glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the cloud. 17Now the appearance of the glory of the LORD was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. 18Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.
1See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. 2But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. 3And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the LORD of hosts.
4Remember the teaching of my servant Moses, the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.
5Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. 6He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.
18Once when Jesus was praying alone, with only the disciples near him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” 19They answered, “John the Baptist; but others, Elijah; and still others, that one of the ancient prophets has arisen.” 20He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “The Messiah of God.”
21He sternly ordered and commanded them not to tell anyone, 22saying, “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
23Then he said to them all, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. 25What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves? 26Those who are ashamed of me and of my words, of them the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. 27But truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”
The arrogance reminds me of Suzanne Vega’s queen and the soldier. This song means a fair amount — it reminds me of a young woman who became the mother of my children, but is now strangling in the solitude she prefers. The song covers with a surgeons precision the current situation for men and women, and I think it was written in the 1980s.
For women, there are two warnings here: the arrogance of the queen, treating men as disposable, has led to the men walking away. Men die: in building things, in fighting wars — the risky jobs in most societies are generally done by men — from Xenophon’s March to the Sea to Gold Mining on Discovery Channel. And all we want is to ‘love a young woman we don’t understand’.
But the queen is ashamed of how her heart will break, and the soldier would walk away (if the queen had not had him killed).
The second warning is in Malachi, and reflects through to the gospel. The arrogant and their works will be destroyed. Power is fluid, and when it runs through your hands like water you and your family will suffer: consider the fate of the Romanov, or the National Socialist Hierarchy, who preferred death by their own hand to rape, torture and the Gulag.
For we cannot mock God for too long. He is just, and he will do to us what he did to the regimes of Stalin and Hitler, the Mayans, Spain of Philip, the Hapsburg and the Belgian Empire. He will leave nothing but the righteous, who will rise to do his vengeance.
It is far better to take responsibility for your own sin, to repent, to be humble, than to project it elsewhere. Do not shut your ears to the law, or to correction.
It’s so easy, for women especially, who’ve lived sheltered fairytale lives to scowl other women for having made mistakes, or worse – horror of horrors, being fat, oh my goodness! Why is it, i cannot help but to detect glee at the attempts on (supposed) christian sites to shame women whose backgrounds and situations we know nothing about? Christian or otherwise, women get their “tingles” harshing other women. Why should men take women seriously – let alone hire or vote us into positions of responsibility? Sometimes, the catty drama almost evokes empathy towards mgtowers – almost!
[ssm: The problem is, all a woman has to do is say:
X is wrong. X is bad for society. Therefore X should be stigmatized and women who engage in X behavior should be shamed or shunned in order to maintain social order for the good of most people.
for people like you to levy all kinds of wild accusations like "She's gleeful over the women are doing X, that's all!" or "She's tingling from harshing on other women, that's all!"
It's really a very ingenious method of silencing any appropriate judgment at all, when you think about it. All a woman like you has to do to silence any judgment by other women of extremely foolish and immoral behavior (such as 18-year-old girls engaging in on-camera prostitution) is to say that you detect hidden motivations and secret glee, and you discredit their words. And you don't even have to prove that the woman who said those things actually had any glee or tingles; the accusation is enough.
Men, do you see now why all is lost without you? The female herd cannot police itself. Do you see that here in this very thread? Listen to the women bickering with each other, trying to discredit one another and outmaneuver one another, over judging what would have been an offense worthy of death in Bible days and which would have resulted in total ostracization even a few generations ago. Now one woman can't even say this is foolish and immoral without the entire herd descending to judge her secret thoughts, probable motivations, emotional and sexual status, and hidden agenda.
Without men taking control of the situation, civilization is doomed and we are headed back to a chaotic matriarchy in the dirt.]
You are not necessarily responsible for what happens to you. You are not responsible for the person who assaulted you, the employer who deliberately placed your life at risk, or for the choice your wife or husband made to frivorce you.
But you are completely responsible for what you do now. You must not allow the fact (unfairly) that you lacked shelter or provision or protection or (what SSM was getting at) leadership to let yourself think that you do not have moral agency. We will all be called to account for what we have done in this life, and we all will be found wanting.
We are all flawed. We are all needing to reform, repent — and shame and guilt are the guideposts that lead us there, not a artificially inflated sense of self esteem.
But be warned: for the arrogant, who accept no correction, there is but destruction.
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