We live in an age of rhetoric. Rhetoric is the use of emotion: to bypass reason and a cold-blooded consideration of the evidence to make a wise decision and instead “listen to your heart” and do what is made to feel right. The more reasoned and calm other, reasoned discussion is generally called dialectic.
A skilled advocate will use both. The most concentrated form of such is no longer the nightly news or the latest Hollywood narrative, but the meme. Large organizations, converged with the narrative, make and publish both reasoned arguments and emotive arguments. They will not give a platform to those who reason for Christ. They will mock any emotional appeal: mustrusting modern evangelists.
But memes are cheap, and the internet acts as a vector. This has allowed a fightback on the political level: seen in Gamergate, the Trumpenreich, Brexit, and the ongoing virtue spirals and daily hate: as the right self deports to Gab Twitter is becoming used by no-one but memelords and trolls.
But the Gospel is no meme.
1Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. 2We have renounced the shameful things that one hides; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God. 3And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. 6For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
7But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. 8We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. 11For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. 12So death is at work in us, but life in you.
The meme wars between the narrative from the elite and the alternative or dissidents, be they religious, right wing, left wing or libertarian… has some flaws. The first is that any alternative to the accepted discourse leads to doubt. The second is that many of the most skilled are not accepted in the elite, for the cathedral of the elite is for Molech, and he is a jealous and psychotic God.
And the third is this: we don’t need t a meme war. For us it but witness. This is why we write more than 140 symbols in a post, and this post is not a string of graphics. We have the Holy Spirit. We carry the gospel with us, and in the rejections we experience because we refuse to bow to the altar of Tolerance or destroy our unborn children for Topeth we show the gospel more clearly.
It is the spirit of God that brings people to Christ. I pray that this blog does its small part.
In the face of the ongoing proclamation that many of us are mistaken in our distrust of supposed facts and figures that show most of us have tendencies we didn’t know about or are resisting our urges to be what we are not I was encouraged to watch kids in an army tent at Ohakea yesterday where boys (and a few girls) were excited at the chance to lie down behind a machine gun or sniper rifle and play with a shortened shot gun. No barbie doll alternative was visible. Boys generally will be boys if allowed to be – as it was always intended.
Saw some kids in canoes at the Bay and chasing each other around yesterday. Being ordinary. Agree.