Tag: witchhunts

Pray that our leaders will let us alone.

Hallowe'en,, Ontario, 2007
Hallowe’en,, Ontario, 2007

I had to dig up an old photo from a previous trip here. We don’t really celebrate all the festivals of North American in the Antipodes: we have a few of our own such as Guy Fawkes (which I like. It is a fossil from the religious wars — we celebrate that England did not become part of the Holy, Roman, and Haspburg empire. Given the current issues with England being ruled from Brussels, there is a certain sense of violating the political rules of tolerance with this festival.

But to the text. I don’t think anyone is going to worship the skeleton band, or the Guy. We are more likely to worship our possessions, or our ideology. And worshiping anyone but God has consequences. I have heard many preach the first half of this passage as a promise of prosperity if one obeys, but we are not taught this in the new covenant. But the older covenant still stands, and describes what would naturally happen if God turns from us as a nation.

Which is why we need to pray for our leaders. That they let us alone.

LEVITICUS 26:1-20

1You shall make for yourselves no idols and erect no carved images or pillars, and you shall not place figured stones in your land, to worship at them; for I am the LORD your God. 2You shall keep my sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD.

3If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully, 4I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. 5Your threshing shall overtake the vintage, and the vintage shall overtake the sowing; you shall eat your bread to the full, and live securely in your land. 6And I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one shall make you afraid; I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword shall go through your land. 7You shall give chase to your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. 8Five of you shall give chase to a hundred, and a hundred of you shall give chase to ten thousand; your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. 9I will look with favor upon you and make you fruitful and multiply you; and I will maintain my covenant with you. 10You shall eat old grain long stored, and you shall have to clear out the old to make way for the new. 11I will place my dwelling in your midst, and I shall not abhor you. 12And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people. 13I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be their slaves no more; I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.

14But if you will not obey me, and do not observe all these commandments, 15if you spurn my statutes, and abhor my ordinances, so that you will not observe all my commandments, and you break my covenant, 16I in turn will do this to you: I will bring terror on you; consumption and fever that waste the eyes and cause life to pine away. You shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. 17I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down by your enemies; your foes shall rule over you, and you shall flee though no one pursues you. 18And if in spite of this you will not obey me, I will continue to punish you sevenfold for your sins. 19I will break your proud glory, and I will make your sky like iron and your earth like copper.20Your strength shall be spent to no purpose: your land shall not yield its produce, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit.

1 TIMOTHY 2:1-6

1First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, 2for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. 3This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.5For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, 6who gave himself a ransom for all – this was attested at the right time.

So we should pray for our leaders, so that we lead a quiet life, and can do good, and are not persecuted. We need to do good in the place we are at, regardless of what the conditions are. We also need to preach the gospel regardless of the conditions.

And in praying for our leaders and ourselves, we need to pray for mercy. For our society has tolerated too much. I’m not talking as much about the various parades of perversions (from Mardi Gras to Folson St). I’m more worried about the death rate from abortions. The death rate from not having adequate mental health care, particularly for young men. (it is much nicer to do therapy with girls who cut themselves than with men who get scary. Particularly if, like three quarters to nine tenths of therapists, you are female and feminist).

I had a good going Jeremiad drafting in my head, given that the most recent college murder is being politicized, but one needs to take a step back. These events are shocking. These events are also very rare. Which is why even the world leaders in this area are reduced to speculation.

Topics discussed include media bias when the criminal is a young male, the influence of the copycat phenomenon, whether these acts tend to be impulsive or deliberate and well-planned, triggers for these actions and whether revenge is involved, the impact of the current culture in schools in the U.S., and access to firearms. The psychologist from Finland says that the American school system in America promotes social class, racial, and other differences among students more than the European school system – which is going to startle those who are non-elites in Europe and discover they have no way to start a business or get ahead in life if they were born to the wrong family and therefore did not go to the right school.

Forensic psychologist Reid Meloy cuts through the popular spin and reminds the panel that mass murder cases in the United States haven’t changed since 1976. They are also not out of line with the rest of the developed world. They just get more attention because of the effort to ban guns in the US and the desire for Europeans to want to feel like their culture is superior. There are now approximately 20 of these cases per year among a population in excess of 300 million people who own a lot of guns. That means mass shootings are shockingly rare. Meloy does note that what should be examined is why mass murders have not gone down since 1976 – gun ownership is up in the US and still individual homicides are down. Even in California, an anti-gun culture, the curves in increased gun ownership and decreased gun murder are telling. What has changed since 1976 is the use of drugs for milder psychological conditions.

Yuki Nishimura of Japan notes that guns are illegal there, so people strangle each other and that does not really lend itself to mass killing.

Citation: Mary Ellen O’Toole, Jorge Folino, James Garbarino, Steven M. Gorelick, Helinä Häkkänen-Nyholm, J. Reid Meloy, Stanton E. Samenow, Yuki S. Nishimura, ‘Why Do Young Males Attack Schools? Seven Discipline Leaders Share Their Perspectives’, Violence and Gender doi:10.1089/vio.2013.1505.

Now what should we do in the church? Well the new hashtag for this is facile. We need to pray for the grieving. Like Helen Smith, I’d argue that we need proactive community care for those who are broken by mental illness, and we also need shelter for those who are most damaged — preferably in communities no bigger than 50. The York Asylum is a good model: the large mental hospitals of last century is a bad one.

And we need to pray that the elite will leave us alone, and if they do not, that we will endure.

In our horror, we need to think and not point. There are those who want to purify society of those they do not like: this time the right is being accused along with the men’s right’s movement (the two are not synonymous) despite this man being anti such. But the more the flames of offense are encouraged, the more people cannot think but in approved ways, the more likely that the backlash will be violent. The USA is an empire, and like all empires it has structural instability. And one only needs to look at Ukraine to see the endgame of the destruction of a society.

It is not like the end of “V”

Instead it is more like this.

We worry about seven dead in California, and we ought. But we should grieve by the body count in Eastern Europe and in Sub Saharan Africa. We need to pray that all leaders leave us alone, so that we can be allowed to preserve society (salt) and reform society (light),. The alternative is destruction, but for the mercy of God.

So above all, pray for mercy, beginning with ourselves.

We are all broken witnesses.

R0010273We are, in this age, and in this time, the only witness of Christ that this world has.

We are it. Yesterday a series of accusations took over the combox and increased the traffic here considerably: I have checked with Will S, and he has had a similar experience. And it meant I had to consider what I moderated out. When I was made aware of what Matt Forney said (who I half trust) then I contacted one party and suggested that if it was true she should step back: I have asked both parties if their children are OK.

And that is what email is for, and privacy. There is a reason that the photos here and at shattered light only rarely show photos of me or my kids. And I mistrust GOMI.

But, since the traffic is way up, fair warning. This blog is mainly about the lectionary. And I am very, very easy to find: my employers are quite aware of what I write. Let’s say that I am not looking for promotion until I am so far above the criteria that it would be a rubber stamp.

2 CORINTHIANS 1:23-2:11

23But I call on God as witness against me: it was to spare you that I did not come again to Corinth. 24I do not mean to imply that we lord it over your faith; rather, we are workers with you for your joy, because you stand firm in the faith.

1So I made up my mind not to make you another painful visit. 2For if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have pained? 3And I wrote as I did, so that when I came, I might not suffer pain from those who should have made me rejoice; for I am confident about all of you, that my joy would be the joy of all of you. 4For I wrote you out of much distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain, but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you.

5But if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but to some extent – not to exaggerate it – to all of you. 6This punishment by the majority is enough for such a person; 7so now instead you should forgive and console him, so that he may not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. 8So I urge you to reaffirm your love for him. 9I wrote for this reason: to test you and to know whether you are obedient in everything. 10Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. What I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ. 11And we do this so that we may not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.

GOSPEL READING MARK 12:1-11

1Then he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a pit for the wine press, and built a watchtower; then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. 2When the season came, he sent a slave to the tenants to collect from them his share of the produce of the vineyard. 3But they seized him, and beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. 4And again he sent another slave to them; this one they beat over the head and insulted. 5Then he sent another, and that one they killed. And so it was with many others; some they beat, and others they killed. 6He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 7But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8So they seized him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. 9What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10Have you not read this scripture: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone;11this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’?”

When all the accusations were flying around yesterday I was at work. The idea that any person may find themselves losing their kids is horrible. But… I’ve been involved in pulling children away from their mothers: at work — and I am a solo Dad who for some years lived by a court order that (initially) had the children living apart from me, and then with me. Been there, done that. And yes, that disqualifies me from elder-ship, and probably disqualifies me from a teaching ministry.

But Paul tells us that after a period of repentance, to let a person back into the fellowship. To allow them into the fellowship. For we are all broken, and this world will always turn away from the truth.

And at present the times are perilous.

In these times, we need to recall that as the people and authorities rejected Christ, so they will reject us. We need to maintain unity. And we cannot be altogether precious. If there is wrong, we need to confront us.

[And, for the new readers, I am quoting a Catholic, but Catholic I am not]

One of the most liberating teachings of our Catholic faith is the idea that suffering–though undesirable and not part of God’s original plan–is an inescapable part of living in a fallen world.
That might not sound terrifically liberating on the face of it. Who wants to suffer? No one, of course. But although life is filled with trials and problems, much of the suffering we endure is brought on by the idea that suffering itself means that there is something wrong with us. As a culture, we have been led to believe that the greatest good is a stress free, problem-free, perfectly healthy, blissfully happy life. In light of this over-riding sense that the only life worth celebrating–much less living–is the perfectly contented life, even those of us who are hip to the secret that (as Scott Peck once shocked people by saying) “Life is hard” are inclined to give into the temptation that every stressor, ache, or disappointment is just another unbearable catastrophe that must mean that our life is terribly, terribly, broken and there is something terribly, terribly wrong with us and/or our circumstances

We must, must comfort the people broken and bleeding from accusations. We must pray for each other. We must check that people are OK. For everyone of us is broken. Everyone of us is fallible. And each one of us fears the turn of the screw, the publicity of the doxxing (which I misspelt as Dozzing yesterday, for it feels like the buzzing of malevolent bees).

So, after yesterday, can people pray for Sunshine Mary’s family and For Lena and 7man and their families. For they alone know the truth. Can we pray particularly for the safety of any children who were doxxed as collateral damage in a fight between parents.

And can we pray for Matt Forney, and the Trollettes at GOMI, for being a witch-finder and the accuser of the brethren will indeed damage your soul.