We went for a walk yesterday: I am in a Prairie province and with the daughter, What I noted is that there is a huge contrast between Germany and Canada (or NZ, for that matter). I managed to move one block the wrong way a couple of times: there is not good coffee (and three universities) in a small town, but a lot of irritation. We hit the grocery store, and worked out we could eat healthy here for much less than it costs back home. But most people do not.

It does not feel sustainable, and this is the more stable part of that nation.

I don’t want any of it. I just want to be left alone to raise my family in a religious/cultural community that does not appear to exist.
I am simply trying to run out the clock at this point. I am trying to create a situation for me and my family that maximizes our chances to survive whatever is coming. That’s it, nothing more. I advocate nothing. No overthrow. Now revolution, nothing. If I want anything, it’s the cause of Christ. But I am not visionary enough to know or even have an opinion about what that would look like, honestly.
I am still trying to be a “good” citizen. Trying to be kind to my neighbors. Helping out where I can. I am trying to exhibit pro-social tendencies in a society that I have major philosophical and moral problems with. I occasionally take risks for the greater good that I think might be worth it in the end, etc. I do happen to believe that a patriarchal (male authority) based system may be the key to it. I just think the party is going to be over soon, that’s all.

The pressure is also on to fall in line with the narrative of this time, even though it is failing. Elspeth comments on the same post.

I have absolutely no problem envisioning a scenario where my family, along with all the aforementioned people, are together deemed unworthy of polite society, gainful employment or life itself based on our adherence to traditional Christian teaching on marriage and sexuality, parenting, education, politics, or any worldview (especially our Faith) outside of the dominant narrative which we refuse to acquiesce on.
More than that, what I envision can be found written in Scripture, making it a statistical certainty. The racial stuff? When/if it happens, it will be regional at best, but it is only going to serve to excuse the ultimate militant crackdown on ideological (which are really religious) enemies.
When we allow ourselves to be distracted and buy into the narrative the headlines are tailor-made to get us to buy into, we lose sight of the bigger, eternal picture.
So yeah. A war is coming, but the war some of you go on about is nothing more than the opening battle, setting the stage for the ultimate war.

But this will all pass away. When a patriot cannot tell if he belongs to the nation, the nation is reaching its use by date. However, love is of God, and it will remain with one caveat: love is not defined as sexual licence but as caring for the beloved before one self. (Mr Weinstein take. note)

1 Corinthians (13:1-3) 13:4-13

¹If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. ⁹For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; ¹⁰but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. ¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. ¹²For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

There are a whole pile of fishhooks in this passage. Let us start with this: there is no virtue is spirituality, or spiritual power, or giftedness. None. Such things are given to us, but with the gifts comes responsibility. Our gifts and talents are to be used for others, and this is love.

When a cook is teaching the next generation how to cook, as was happening yesterday, that is love. When you serve , it is love. It is not about you. It is never about you.

The second fishhook is that all these gifts and credentials and achievements in this life will fade. We will either converge into the pit of hell, or we will be made like Christ, in glory, for the glory of God.

The choice is binary. There is no triangulation, no third way, and no means to turn from this that is not heresy.

United Methodist Church bishop Dr. Karen Oliveto is not only a lesbian, she also believes and publicly teaches that Jesus was a bigot filled with prejudices. She does say that Jesus grew and changed, and that’s her point. Bishop Oliveto admonishes,

“If Jesus can change, if he can give up his bigotries and prejudices, if he can realize that he had made his life too small, and if, in this realization, he grew closer to others and closer to God, then so can we.”

Now there is so much wrong with this the mind boggles. First how does she know that Jesus grew and changed? –Is it because she thinks so? — what proof does she offer? What makes her think he gave up his bigotries and prejudices, if in fact he ever had any. And he made his life too small. Really? The creator of the universe and we’re to believe he thought small when creating the son? She certainly takes a lot on herself by declaring these things as fact. What was that he said about pride goeth before the fall? But I digress.
The United Methodist Church has been on the descent into apostasy for years now. While the denomination is currently in the midst of their 75 weeks of praying about accepting homosexuality, they have long allowed pastors of their churches to go against their current beliefs on the matter. In 2005, Karen Oliveto, a non-celibate lesbian, officiated several same-sex marriages that were held in the United Methodist church she pastored.
Oliveto’s teachings cover the range of normal progressive “Christian” beliefs — the denial of the exclusivity of the Christian faith and the denial of the authority of the Bible to name two. However, it’s her direct attack on certain Bible passages and Biblical figures that has caused some within the UMC to be concerned.
Concerned? They are just concerned? They should be furious and kick her out of the church. This woman shouldn’t be allowed to get within miles of a pulpit unless it’s to fall down on her knees and repent.

Miss Olivato needs to not merely repent, disavow her teaching and state that convergence with the progressive narrative is obeying the spirit of this age (which is Satanic) but she then needs to act. She has to resign her position, leave the ministry, disavow her faux marriage and live in Godly Celibacy unless the Lord brings some saint to husband her up. I am glad I am taken, for that is a task beyond me.

But this we should know. Our tribes and our nations will end. But Christ will not. God will not. And God is love.