The poor and broken will the faithful make.

I do not have a seasonal theology, but my congregation does. Over this period, looking towards Easter, I am using pictures I took in 2009 with a point and shoot. I look at them and consider they are not good — having said that, the camera I used then is lost, but I did manage to find the chip with all the photos on it. The churches in Florence are beautiful. They make me want to worship: I also admire the art in them, the skill by which it has been made, and the fact that there is often objects made over a few hundred years within the same building.

But only a small number of Italians are faithful, most are functionally pagans. Their worship, if not money or formula one, is their soccer team. The remnant relies on tourists, like me, paying to enter what have become more museum than congregation.

This is not what it was. Nor is it what it should be. I noted that yesterday’s sermon pointed out that Christians living for the kingdom preserve the nation around them: lose the Christians, silence the Christians, watch your culture fall apart over but one generation.

But those of Christ are still called to live for that kingdom, and to remain faithful to those commands.

Psalm 119:73-80

⁷³  Your hands have made and fashioned me; give me understanding that I may learn your commandments.
⁷⁴  Those who fear you shall see me and rejoice, because I have hoped in your word.
⁷⁵  I know, O LORD, that your judgments are right, and that in faithfulness you have humbled me.
⁷⁶  Let your steadfast love become my comfort according to your promise to your servant.
⁷⁷  Let your mercy come to me, that I may live; for your law is my delight.
⁷⁸  Let the arrogant be put to shame, because they have subverted me with guile;
as for me, I will meditate on your precepts.
⁷⁹  Let those who fear you turn to me, so that they may know your decrees.
⁸⁰  May my heart be blameless in your statutes, so that I may not be put to shame.

1 Corinthians 4:8-20 (21)

⁸Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Quite apart from us you have become kings! Indeed, I wish that you had become kings, so that we might be kings with you! ⁹For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, as though sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to mortals. ¹⁰We are fools for the sake of Christ, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. ¹¹To the present hour we are hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clothed and beaten and homeless, ¹²and we grow weary from the work of our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; ¹³when slandered, we speak kindly. We have become like the rubbish of the world, the dregs of all things, to this very day.

¹⁴I am not writing this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. ¹⁵For though you might have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers. Indeed, in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. ¹⁶I appeal to you, then, be imitators of me. ¹⁷For this reason I sent you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ Jesus, as I teach them everywhere in every church. ¹⁸But some of you, thinking that I am not coming to you, have become arrogant. ¹⁹But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. ²⁰For the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power. ²¹What would you prefer? Am I to come to you with a stick, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?

We may consider ourselves rich and powerful. We are not. If we are of Christ, we oppose the very nature of this world, and the powers within this world. who can mobilize resources to shut us down and shut us up.

n one way I think the tactics of censors in general are interesting because they show us how Darwinism came to be accepted as “science” despite the back that it is at odds with the evidence from origin of life studies and the Cambrian explosion, not to mention molecular machinery in the cell. The science doesn’t matter if the government and the courts make it illegal to question the dogma.

Another reason never to write under your real name. Use an alias, because these people don’t play games. They will go after you in your work place and destroy your ability to earn a living. Don’t make it easy for them.

Well, yeah, I blog under my real name. And there are risks attached to this — probably less risks at present in New Zealand than elsewhere: within the commonwealth the remnant includes our Monarch, who has a deep and abiding faith.

But the church is falling.

And WHY does Dolan finally feel free to show the callous indifference to not just human souls but also to the Sacred Heart of Our Blessed Lord that it is crystal clear he has felt for a long time? Why is does Dolan now feel fully liberated to ratify sodomy and increase his own worldly popularity by his complete indifference to sin, manifested in this sick permissiveness of objective evil? Because Pope Francis has thrown open the barn door. Dolan – like the Advocate magazine and every other tool and mouthpiece for satan on the planet – quotes Pope Francis Bergoglio specifically: Who am I to judge?

Besides a priest and bishop charged with the spiritual well-being of his flock? Besides a rational human being?

Does Dolan really believe that we are called by God to make absolutely NO moral judgements whatsoever about human behavior? Really? So we can’t judge murder? We can’t judge rape? We can’t judge theft? ”Judge not lest ye be judged” is God Almighty abolishing the very notion of sin and demanding total anarchy? REALLY?

Well, yes, we can judge. We have to Judge. It’s best to think of homosexuality as a little bit of barium in the system — it illuminates what is wrong. The current demand for enthusiastic approval of their lifestyle…

For once, can the other 98.3% of the population who are not homosexual enjoy an event without gays’ obsessive attention-whoring need to be enthusiastically affirmed by us for their sexual practices? Because remember kids, according to The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, a gay and lesbian think tank, in a study released in April 2011, just 1.7 percent of Americans between 18 and 44 identify as gay or lesbian (and a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey of women between 22 and 44 that questioned more than 13,500 respondents between 2006 and 2008 found very similar numbers – 1% identified as gay, with another 4% identifying as bisexual). The answer to my question is no. Gays are not capable of simply marching in the parade. That would be too oppressive for them. And because they feel oppressed, this tiny 1.7% of the population has thrown a hissy fit while everyone scrambles about to placate them:

… is around the moral rot in the larger part of the population. We have moved to a hedonic marketplace, where what matters is not your covenant with, or duty to one another, but instead what pleasure the person brings to you. We have corrupted marriage: it going gay is just a matter of sticking a fork into something that is already done.

So what are the stigmata of the faithful church? This list is not exhaustive, but it is a place to look.

• They are unpopular. They teach the word of God, which is now accounted as hate speech. Conversely, the priests and elders who are praised by this world are all too often, as is the case with Nolan, compromised and approving of the sins of this world.
• The are fertile, and thus poor. Raising children is expensive and tiring. Letting a woman be a mother and homeschooler requires that their husband has an above average wage and that the wife can play “defence” by being frugal.
• They do not have high self esteem, in fact they hold this in contempt and call this arrogance. They instead grieve for their sin and continually reform their lives. They use the structures of confession and reconciliation (they exist in all services) to keep close accounts.
• This makes them broken — by their sin:  poor — because of their obligations and shunned — because they do not bow to the shibboleths of the elite.
• They ignore the culture of this time. They are not cool. They are not that fashionable. And those who make their living in clothery and modeling know the artificiality of that world.

They are not famous, politically correct or necessarily polite. But their actions are just and good.  Remember that Christ said this road would be hard. The road of ease leads to perdition. So find the remnant and be part of that.