I have put myself into a quarantine: whatever the virus I have had is (and I am over the worst, I hope) I do not want to share it. So I will stay away from church today. But these are parts of the text for tdoay, and you wonder which is the safer to discuss.
I have my thoughts. It would be easier to teach about madness, and people rejecting, than the immorality within our lives and within our church. And it would be far easier to talk about that than the shamelessness that exists within our society.
Reports that a Jewish candidate at University of California, Los Angeles’ student council was subjected to an anti-Semitic inquisition by fellow students have the media atwitter, and rightly so.
But there’s nothing new here. Anti-Semitism is just part of the anti-Western and anti-American animus that passes under the name of “multiculturalism,” and has been burning up campuses for decades now.
So the answer to the question why do UCLA students think they can openly discriminate against Jews is that such is the primordial soup in which they swim on campus. A better question is why Americans keep handing their sons and daughters over to this nihilistic form of cultural suicide. Only calling it out for what it is, rather than pretending it’s a one-off phenomenon, may force us to find a solution
“For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely.
They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.
Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown,” says the LORD.(Jeremiah 6:13-15 ESV)
The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. And he did not permit him but said to him, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.
(Mark 5:14-20 ESV)
“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
(1 Corinthians 6:12-20 ESV)
Over the last few days I have not been putting as many pretty pictures up. Not because I lack them, but because the topics are not pretty, It seems aesthetically wrong to discuss the current state of this world and the church and put up a picture of a beach. Or a forest.
Even though my usual response to our society is to get out into the bush, and look at something wonderful. To read (I have been reading light stuff over the last few days, and there seems to be a fashion of steampunk: of setting things in Victorian times, unconsciously noting how we have fallen).
And fallen we have. As we have rejected God, and removed shame from our vocabulary, our actions have become worse. Horrifying. As if, as a society, we are possessed by a Legion of the infernal.
What should we do? Our mainstream culture is evil: do we disengage? Do we deliberately live in a retroculture, disconnecting from the internet, television and movies, and as in the Maine of an imagined future, reject any technology not in general use by 1930? [1]
Do we look for a new beginning?
Do we start to act? Do we reform ourselves? For aligned with the forces of evil we should not be: if those of that false religion Islam or th pernicious influences of the liberal elite who would rather we were looking at Lethe, be it fantasy, nerd culture or p0rn.
For in this time, living with truth, honour and beauty is to be a rebel: let us not be footsoldiers in the destruction of that which was once great. Let us instead…. reform. And pray for revival
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1. The irony is that the only place I can find this book is on Amazon: it’s not on kobo and it is definately not in the bookshelves. It starts with a burning at the stake. Do not give to the kids.
