Yesterday I went to a wedding: the pro photographer’s cousin. We stood on a lawn, while the ceremony took place. We had a meal…. and when the dancing started, we went away.
The question one has to ask is why do we do these things. Why do we insist that weddings are a public ceremony. I’d rather have something small. But we understand that such things require witnesses.
That was followed overnight by a nightmare, in which I spoke the research findings in a meeting when asked my opinion, and was told I was wrong, check my privilege, and recant: I woke as in the dream I was leaving the room with the full knowledge that my job was gone.
There is a cost to speaking publicly. To leading: and at times that cost takes away our reputation, our freedom, our ability to say truth in the face of power. As if these things have any value: they do not. For in the grave all reputation and riches are naught, and nor reputation nor riches makes a lie true.
On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This really is the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some said, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” So there was a division among the people over him. Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.
The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring him?” The officers answered, “No one ever spoke like this man!”
(John 7:37-46 ESV)
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
(Hebrews 12:1-2 ESV)
Before truth the house guards of the Temple could not stand: but that ended up not being a guarantee, for Christ was taken eventually to a cross. He was aware of the cost.
At the moment most of us can compromise, but that time is getting shorter. We are being asked to attend “education” sessions. We are being screamed at. The endgame of the failed progressive experiment is upon us, and it is ugly.
CH (who I think used to be part of a now closed blog — can someone correct me if he is still up, because he’s astute) notes, from the other side of the Pacific, that the cost could end up putting us in the Gulag.
For the truth is now subversive. And I would co sign his final comments.
I’ve prepared myself for prison. I do not see it as at all far-fetched to prepare myself for this. Of course, I’ve learned the hard way to be very careful whom I broach such a subject with (i.e., family members and many friends this is not such a great idea). But the fact is, as you noted, we must obey God. And as also noted, the law is no longer merely against our Faith but indeed, our entire society and the traditions that held it so carefully together. I consider it likely that, should things continue this way, the worst case scenarios could very well prove true.
….
What we need is less envy, less spite and more grace, more couth and a heap more willingness to do the things we sometimes do not wish in order that we might garner the things we need.
Which brings me to the final incident from Saturday. In the morning I was doing the weekly groceries, and they local Catholic Nuns were setting up a fundraising. I slipped them a sum. Not in agreement with all Roman theology: I am reformed in theology for many reasons, but in solidarity. At this time all those who speak the truth, seek beauty, and place their errors, flaws and bad habits behind them to run with endurance the course they are set need their brothers at their back. For the world has made it obvious that all these things it stands against.
Sir, thou art too kind. I be here:
http://speakeasyx.wordpress.com
I saw a church billboard on the way home this evening that actually gave me something useful. I’d heard it before but its been a long time. It said:
“God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called.”
It’s so cliche and pat that you almost miss the deep implications of what it says. But thank God, quite literally, that it’s true.
Thou hast been added: look in the linkage under “Nutraditionalism”.
And this introvert cannot stop the thought process.