Wisdom needed, right now.

One of the things that we need to do, within the faith, is be careful about what we support and what we believe in. We need to be wise. We need to be mature, to be adults. This may involve avoiding being part of organizations that deceive. Yesterday I finished the task I went to Auckland for and had some time so went walking around my old home town. There was a man promoting Amnesty International: on organization I used to support but do so no longer.

We need to have some care. The social agenda of the elite looks like justice, but is in fact slavery, and the monies or support you think are going for freedom, are going into slavery.

I should add, that among the Presbyterians, we truly love verse 32 and 33 of this passage. The rest… well many believe that tongues have ceased. I find that difficult, for the text speaks openly about this and the text is for today.

1 CORINTHIANS 14:20-33A

²⁰Brothers and sisters, do not be children in your thinking; rather, be infants in evil, but in thinking be adults. ²¹In the law it is written, “By people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people; yet even then they will not listen to me,” says the Lord.²²Tongues, then, are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers, while prophecy is not for unbelievers but for believers. ²³If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your mind?²⁴But if all prophesy, an unbeliever or outsider who enters is reproved by all and called to account by all. ²⁵After the secrets of the unbeliever’s heart are disclosed, that person will bow down before God and worship him, declaring, “God is really among you.”

²⁶What should be done then, my friends? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. ²⁷If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn; and let one interpret. ²⁸But if there is no one to interpret, let them be silent in church and speak to themselves and to God. ²⁹Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. ³⁰If a revelation is made to someone else sitting nearby, let the first person be silent.³¹For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged. ³²And the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets, ³³for God is a God not of disorder but of peace.

The gifts or talents we have are not for us alone. Consider Calvin’s comments on this passage.

Paul concludes that the gift of tongues has not been conferred with the view of giving occasion of boasting to a few, without yielding advantage to the Church. “If spiritual gifts,” says he, “delight you, let the end be edification. Then only may you reckon, that you have attained an excellence that is true and praiseworthy — when the Church receives advantage from you. Paul, however, does not hereby give permission to any one to cherish an ambition to excel, even to the benefit of the Church, but by correcting the fault, he shows how far short they come of what they are in pursuit of, and at the same time lets them know who they are that should be most highly esteemed. He would have a man to be held in higher estimation, in proportion as he devotes himself with eagerness to promote edification. In the meantime, it is our part to have this one object in view — that the Lord may be exalted, and that his kingdom may be, from day to day, enlarged.

The term spirits, he employs here, by metonymy, to denote spiritual gifts, as the spirit of doctrine, or of understanding, or of judgment, is employed to denote spiritual doctrine, or understanding, or judgment. Otherwise we must keep in view what he stated previously, that it is one and the same Spirit, who distributeth to every man various gifts according to his will

Now, I have removed Mozilla from my machines. However, my spleen is reserved for people like OK Cupid, who started the pressure of Mozilla to remove Brendon Eich.

Eich, a Mozilla co-founder and the creator of the JavaScript programming language, reportedly donated $1,000 to a campaign in support of Proposition 8, a 2008 California ballot measure that made same-sex marriage illegal under the state constitution.

Although the measure was passed in a general election, it was ultimately struck down as unconstitutional by a federal district court.

The revelation of Eich’s support for the measure has prompted several prominent web developers to call for a boycott of the Firefox browser until such time as Eich steps down as Mozilla’s chief executive.

On Monday, OkCupid joined the protest by posting an open letter to its homepage that only appears when the site is visited with a web browser declaring itself to be Mozilla Firefox. In the note, the dating site urges its users to switch to a different web browser:

If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we’ve worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it’s professionally important to the entire company. OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.

Firefox users can click a link at the bottom of the letter to continue on to the main OKCupid site. But the letter also includes links where users can download alternative web browsers, including Chrome, Opera, and IE – the latter of which OkCupid amusingly calls “Internet Exploder.”

Besides, the concentration on politically correctness and the crud in the code makes alternatives somewhat better. I’m quoting Moe Lane here.

When I heard that Lefty advocates had managed to hound a traditional marriage supporter from his position at Mozilla’s CEO, I did what any sensible opponent of California’s Proposition 8 and supporter of Maryland’s Question 6 would do: I immediately dumped Firefox and found another browser (in my case, Chrome). I support gay marriage. I do not support demonizing the roughly half of the country that disagrees with me.

What I did not realize, however, was just how bad Firefox has gotten over the last few years. I am absolutely shocked by how much faster Chrome loads and operates, and it’s apparently a heck of a lot more stable, too. What makes it more startling is that I had Chrome on my Chromebook; I guess that I assumed that the faster speeds there was just due to Google optimizing the computer for its browser. No, it works better on desktops, too. And you can even import your bookmarks and passwords.

So, seriously: if you use Firefox and you’re ticked with Mozilla, dump Firefox and find another browser that suits you. It’s standing on principle AND will make your life easier, to boot.

Now, I don’t support Gay Marriage. I support the state getting out of the marriage business and leaving it to couples and kirks: that marriage becomes, legally, contract law, and that churches employ some feral lawyers to keep the rules within the flock consistent with biblical principles.

So, the problem we have run up against is one of differing interpretations. To me, marriage is about procreation and childrearing. To others, it is about what they consider love (keep in mind that the incidence of divorce skyrocketed after “love” marriages became the norm), and for yet others it is about tax status and government survivor benefits. Therefore, it has come to be seen as a basic human right, which is a direct and inevitable result of government meddling in the institution.

However, what Eich and other conservatives want is more government involvement. They want the state to define marriage according to their view, even though this is exactly what created the problem in the first place. This is the fundamental flaw in their argument, and why they cannot win in a liberal democracy. Let’s face it: the US is a pluralistic society. For better or for worse, there is no more dominant national culture or identity. Therefore, attempts to impose one will always meet resistance or fail.

Instead of bashing their heads against a wall in an effort to persuade everyone else to see things their way, conservatives must accept the inevitable and make allowances for pluralism. Doing this requires removing the ability of the state to define marriage. No more official gay marriage; no more official straight marriage. No official polygamy or divorce, either. It’s an elegant and easy solution. Allow people to enter into conjugal civil contracts enforceable by civil courts, and remove the word “marriage” from the lawbooks. People can call themselves married, or whatever they please. I don’t have to agree with your version of marriage; you don’t have to agree with mine.

In these times, we need to be wise. We need to be careful. And we need to pick our battles carefully. Let the pagans marry how the will, for Hollywood and the Aristocracy have had a deep stream of corruption from their founding (the restoration of the Monarchy and the development of moving pictures, respectively). We need to keep the rules clear within the church, and those rules have to apply much more to those of us who are heterosexually inclined.

And on speaking in tongues? I don’t think it has ceased. That is an error. But encouraging mass outbreaks in worship is a greater one. We need to be witnesses in our worship to a God of order, not of chaos.