Some things that have caused me no small amount of frustration and grief have been America’s opioid problems, the spread of meth and heroin addiction, skyrocketing suicide rates, and the radicalization of young men.
It’s kind of like an unholy trifecta of horrors. A perfect confluence that just swept across this country, eventually landing way too close to home. One thing that’s really been maddening is watching it all unfold and being unable to do anything at all except stand by helplessly. I’ve watched a lot of people die. So when you are faced with something so overwhelming, you usually turn to your leaders, politicians, which up until recently has been a lesson in complete futility and hopelessness.
The second thing you do is turn towards your faith, especially your Christian brothers and sisters. That too has brought a great deal of frustration, because many do not understand, some are completely unconcerned, and still others are engaged in some pretty horrible stuff themselves.
I didn’t realize how alone I’ve felt, how completely abandoned, and I guess to understand you’d have to know that one of the proudest moments for the Catholics where I live was having staged a mock ordination of female priests, the rainbow flag in now flying in front of my former church, and our city council is busy delighting in being a sanctuary city.
I’m trying to get somebody to care about people dying and it often seems to just fall on deaf ears.
Here’s the disconnect I often see, some people like to get all upset over blasphemy in a movie like Beauty and The Beast and I need people to get all upset about the radicalization of young men, the atrocities happening there. You can go read about James Jackson at NightWind’s place, he’s one of the latest in a steam of men frequenting red pill sites and going on to commit violence. Terrorism really, as in some red pills merge faith, white supremacy, and exploit the unstable with cultian ideology. These guys consume tons of hateful stuff, entwine it all around perceptions of masculinity, get the impression that violence is God endorsed, and then go out and kill people.
Seems pretty blasphemous and heretical to me. True, not all red pills are Christians. Not all Christian red pills are promoting violence either, but there is enough of a relationship and over lap there for us to observe that there is a connection. Dylann Roof shot up a church and killed nine people. Surely somebody finds that blasphemous.
So what really grieves me is outright hatred being preached in Jesus Christ’s name and when Christians either don’t speak out against it, or worse they endorse it.
If you fancy yourself a contender for the faith, a dragon slayer for all things blasphemous and heretical, there’s an actual place for you direct your energies. You can stand against the hatred, the perversions of masculinity, and the distortions of the gospel going on within that movement. I’ve seen it, its pretty darn ugly and kind of makes complaining about things like the talking clock in Beauty and the Beast seem rather silly.
Just saying.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
I don’t understand such things either. May be to many are looking for a misplaced inner peace or something to that affect. I care about such things. I care much, always have.
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Don’t you think this is all a little hypocritical considering you voted for an authoritarian with sympathies for white supremacy?
(If you didn’t vote for Comrade Alexei Trump, then I stand corrected, although I do recall you saying not that long ago that you liked what Comrade Trump was doing)
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These evils would still be happening even if Clinton were in power. Drug abuse and white supremacy would still be around; you can’t vote or legislate away hatred/abuse, because it will just go underground, and that doesn’t scare me any less. Just because IB may have voted for someone does not mean she endorses everything that they do or say, just like if you voted for Obama it doesn’t mean that you supported all the drone strikes he ordered when he was in power.
You might as well say “Don’t you think this is all a little hypocritical considering you voted at all?” but even that is not fair.
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Really? That is your input?
Please tell me you don’t sit around wondering why no one reads your books John.
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Comrade Alexei Trump? I suppose you are encouraging nonviolence with that?
We have evidence that suggests the previous administration spied illegally on the Trump administration, but we don’t have any evidence that Trump and his people did anything illegal. Republicans are content to methodically investigate the matter. Without any evidence of anything, Democrat Liberals want the majority party to recuse itself from governing.
So right on queue you spout incendiary charges. I guess you are not a red pill guy. Still, you provided a great example of that sort of hysteria.
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Yes Anatoly, of course. Of course.
Your English is very, very good.
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@ ib22.
I hear you.
But God hears you better, and He knows, He understands, He cares. The world is at match point, enflaming itself, people hurting themselves and others, true despair at every level of society, while we believers point fingers at others who are wearing the wrong color shirt.
@jz
Really? You got that out of this?
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This is a good post IB. Too many Christians out there are all about talk, condemnation, and legalism but where actual ministry work needs to be done, they are absent.
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“Too many Christians out there are all about talk, condemnation, and legalism but where actual ministry work needs to be done, they are absent. “
Just as a possible preemptive clarification. I promise you this is not the case with me. Even dear Gabrielle is not going to say it is.
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This was not an accusation leveled at anyone in particular Tribulus.
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We are no different than the Pharisees at times.
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Well, the Pharisees would rather argue with Jesus about healing on the Sabbath (earlier calling Him a Samaritan…how cruel!), saying he has a demon, while ignoring the fact that the man who was born blind can now see. Of course, when they did finally pay attention to the poor soul, they excommunicated him. How appropriate. 🙂
Well said, IB. Let’s remember where the real battle is.
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Here, lemme try this again: (from the other thread)
I say yet again. None of this is unique to me. Spurgeon (for instance) won multitudes to Christ and opened and operated orphanages and fed the poor preaching EXACTLY what I’m saying, including his fierce denunciation (and I do mean FIERCE) of the “worldly amusements” of his day. To say nothing of the bloody, blasphemous pornographic filth today’s unfaithful church loves so much.
“if you are trying to give people hope….”
I’m trying to give God glory first. That’s the difference between us. You’re focused on them and I’m focused on Him.
See, for you, people are the apple and God is the watermelon. People are the focus and God and His name and His glory are the background for that. For me, it’s the other way around Just like the bible and those historic REFORMED STANDARDS I sent you.
Seek ye first the glory of God and HIS honor and THEN you can rest assured in whatever results He gives whether they match YOUR desires and expectations or not. You have that backwards. For you it’s
Don’t you understand the danger in this Gabrielle? Once somebody allows ANYthing except God’s glory to become the primary goal of their life, then all bets are off about what they’ll end up believing and hence what they’ll end up end doing in the name of their new god that has replaced the one true and living God of the bible.
This is most dangerous of all when it’s “good” things, like helping lost and dying dope fiends, that take the place of God in our lives. People are far more useful to Satan doing charitable works while preaching the wrong god than they are killing each other.
The devil doesn’t care if somebody is passed out peeing themselves with a needle in their arm behind a dumpster in deep east 9th precinct Detroit (where we spend considerable time btw, if you wish to compare notes) OR, if they are clean and sober telling their story to a 12 step group. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care if those people go back out and reproduce other clean and sober abuse victims and junkies. He doesn’t care. The more the merrier. He doesn’t care if somebody GOES TO CHURCH, waves their hands and sings VICTORY IN JESUS!!!. He doesn’t care. He will take them to church himself. Pick em up and drive.
What he DOES care about is that they NEVER EVER meet the one true and living God in the one true and risen Christ and we have made that mission very easy for him today. He’s with you. For goodness sake!! Let’s get these people cleaned up and introduce them to a bleeding heart hippified “jesus” who is trying his best and whose reason for existing is to stop their pain if they’ll only let him. And if something like “The Shack” is helpful in this quest, well then that’s great, right? Because people feeling better is much more important than representing God and His Christ faithfully.
We can have folks talking about how it’s only a novel with no theology, outta one side of their mouth, and then, in true lobotomized, brain dead, post modern fashion, talk about how much it’s helping people’s relationship with God outta the other. As if that could happen in the absence of theology. Oh, how the enemy of our souls must love this. However, a special postmodern achievement award goes to those who claim that none of this is opposed to scripture.
You have the wrong focus Gabrielle. God is FAR more concerned about HIS name and HIS glory and the perversion of HIS precious life giving ancient pre-fall covenant of marriage, sex and family than He is about alleviating human suffering. FAAAAAAAAAR more. Spend more time with Him and His word, and less time on art and worldliness and carnality and you’ll understand that.
Then. THEN you will be walking in HIS power because you will be walking in HIS purpose as defined by HIM in HIS word. As long as you (and most of the rest of today’s crippled castrated Americanized church) insist upon seeing results that make YOU feel good as the measure of success, neither God nor the devil (and therefore neither do I) care if you fill Yankee Stadium with alleged success stories.
I’m saying all this as a friend and a brother. Not as an enemy. I have no idea what it is exactly, but there are some people I really REALLY want to get this even more than others. You have always been one of them.
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I think what the enemy really likes is when he can stir up divisions and pit Christians against each other. Separate,divide,control. He also really likes to convince the prideful that they are all alone, the only one in the world doing Christian right.
That way he can deceive our more wounded Christian men into believing the greatest threat to the faith is some mom drowning in the world’s misery and trying to cling to faith.
I was not lying when I said you guys are far more painful to look at then the evangelizing atheists. Your words are very similar, too. No extra credit point for trying to hide it all behind reformed standards or Calvanism.
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GABRIELLE, please hear Paul.
“Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them.”
Those who “who cause dissensions and hindrances” are those who are “CONTRARY to the TEACHING” the apostles had taught. Guess what the word “teaching” is there. It’s the accusative feminine singular of the word DOCTRINE is usually rendered from.
Who causes divisions? Those who abandon sound doctrine. Like you.
I am preaching the old faith as understood by an innumerable multitude of faithful saints who went before us. YOU are teaching a postmodern perversion that alleges to be compatible with that faith.
YOU are the one who left. Not me.
YOU are the divider.
You are partially right about one thing. Christ’s true Church consisting of all those actually regenerate and actually living for Him according to HIS word is a fraction of who claims to be. IF IF IF the scriptures are actually taken seriously no matter who it costs you or makes you wrong about.
Before you jump to conclusions, I do not believe that a robust, self aware “Calvinism” (Calvin would have hated that word had he ever heard it) is required for salvation. I’m actually far more permissive in that regard than many people I know.
As Elijah was crying to the Lord:
The Lord told him:
The best scholarship has Israel at between a million and a million five at that time. You do the math. Out of that population of those who were supposed to be His people, 7000 actually were.
That’s not a precise mathematical truism for all time, but the principle and truth of a “remnant” certainly is. From the days of Noah all through the old covenant, until Jesus Himself declared that few are those who actually find the narrow way. On though church history. Huge visible church claiming rightness with God and a small remnant that actually is.
I am, again, not making this up as I go.
————————————————————–
CHAPTER XXV. Westminster confession of Faith of 1646.
Of the Church.
I. The catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.
II. The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.
————————————————————-
No standard outside of the directly inspired scriptures is authoritative in the same sense Scripture is, but they do provide a huge historical witness. Where’s yours? Not even Wesley or Finney would on your side.
I am standing with the historical church. There has never been, is not now, and never can be, actual mortal division in the true invisible body and bride of Christ where all of and only God’s eternally elect dwell.
YOU have divided from US in favor of your feelings Gabrielle. IF ONLY you could believe that I don’t say any of this to be condescending, mean, hurtful and heartless.
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“YOU have divided from US in favor of your feelings Gabrielle.”
No. I’ve divided because I am called to be set apart from the bovine poo that lurks in people’s hearts and to follow Jesus Christ instead. I’m rather content and at peace with that, too.
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@ Tiribulus: Reformed theology is an interpretation of Scripture; Evangelical theology is an interpretation of Scripture; Catholic theology is an interpretation of Scripture. You have adopted one of these interpretations; Paul Young has adopted another. You have decided that your favored interpretation of Scripture is the correct one; Young has his favored interpretation. Why should anybody accept your view over Young’s view? What qualifies you over him? Why is his view “heresy” and your view not? As a matter of fact, the RCC says you’re teaching heresy. How does anybody know you’re not?
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And to chime in, I represent and support the Catholic view; and will use my antiquity to support it.
And although it is absolutely essential we avoid heresy, Christ makes it clear that all good works should have their reward (even if those who do them may not be faithful Christians).
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@tirib
You say you want to give God glory, first? Go right ahead, no body is stopping you.
But as a brother, (you see, I give you the benefit of the doubt) it is extremely insulting for you to suggest that others are not, and cannot.
.
Especially on THIS blog, where you as a guest, have no problem coming into a clean house with muddy shoes while telling the homeowner that her house is a mess……………
Yes, and I am being kind, but truthful. And please do not confuse this bitter honesty with persecution.
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I don’t know who you are and I don’t care. But you just make a fool of yourself continuing to post a picture of an apple and a watermelon. You think that
God does not care about “alleviating human suffering”. You think He is more concerned with glorifying his name. They are one in the same from the Bible I read. Or perhaps you and I are reading a different Bible!
Jesus walked, ate and slept with sinners. I have not one clue what you are talking about. And the last time I checked, They are part of the Trinity. Now, I don’t care about the theological terms that are constantly thrown around here, but the way you are speaking about addicts is appalling to me. You..you are the reason that no one wants to attend church. You and everyone like you that fills the pews. I know you don’t care what I have to say, but guess what, I’m saying it.
If Jesus were in front of you right now, he would be ashamed of you. And give up on your stupid crusade about one book. You are an appalling person. You need to reread your Bible and get some compassion in your heart. Your long essays show nothing other than a hate filled diatribe that does nothing but make you look bad as well as the Christian faith.
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SAYS “…I’m rather content and at peace ”
EXCELLENT!
Then who cares what I think? 🙂 You have plenty of like minded people to affirm you.
I’ve wasted enough of your time, though certainly not my own. I thank you for honoring me with a CRITIQUE of my piece. Which critique occasioned the launch of this conversation on Monday.
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Oh dear. As I read your post and the subsequent comments, two things come to mind:
1) IB, I agree we focus on the wrong things too often, and legalism is one of them.
2) As we focus on God and the words of Jesus, as we love people AS HE COMMANDED US TO DO – that is, unconditionally – often there is a hidden agenda, which is to convert them. That is not loving unconditionally. Yes, we are to make disciple, but we forget the second part – “Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you.” Which means we teach them to love. If we aren’t doing that, we’re not following his great commission. It all comes down to love.
If we’re not loving, of course we focus on things like Beauty and the Beast!
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I empathize with the heart of this post, certain violence is indeed contrary to Scripture. But to label all violence as heresy or blasphemy is tantamount to the political left’s notion that every mistake made by the current administration is ‘treason’.
For example, your comment: “Surely somebody finds that blasphemous” in general, should definitely be found true – surely ‘Somebody’ does think that way – but that doesn’t make it a universal eternal truth, nor a balanced evaluation of the problem.
The definition of ‘blasphemy’ is literally: the act or offense of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things; profane talk. A biblical example is when Christ claimed to be equal to God, resulting in FALSE accusations by the Pharisees of Jesus speaking blasphemy. For this reason they sought to kill Him. The reason ‘blasphemy of the Holy Spirit’ is the ‘unpardonable sin’ is because speaking against His works by assigning them to the works of the devil is the greatest sacrilege.
Heresy and blasphemy are ALWAYS in direct contrast to what is true.
But I find tremendous harmony with your call to arms: “If you fancy yourself a contender for the faith, a dragon slayer for all things blasphemous and heretical, there’s an actual place for you direct your energies. You can stand against the hatred, the perversions of masculinity, and the distortions of the gospel going on within that movement”.
It’s like your earlier post about Physicians or Criminals, The manner in which we attempt to resolve discerned problems is as important a part of the solution as the remedy itself. A disciplined, balanced approach is the example Christ set for us to follow. As Mel stated, we will be known by our LOVE.
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“I empathize with the heart of this post, certain violence is indeed contrary to Scripture. But to label all violence as heresy or blasphemy….”
Ahhh. I’m chuckling here, but trust me, I do not believe all violence is blasphemy. Some days I can even give a good argument for it’s righteous and moral necessity… 🙂
You would not know all the history there or understand the link I posted, but these guys who recently committed violent crimes first spent a great deal of time hanging out at red pill sites, especially those promoting white supremacy under the guise of Jesus Christ. So we have scripture being presented as evidence of God’s endorsement of violence towards women, black folks, and Jews. That’s the kind of blasphemy I speak of.
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I knew you weren’t theologically off, and you’re right about me not having a full sense of “all the history there or understand the link [you] posted”..
Whoever those ‘red-pills’ are, promoting violence in the name of Christ while siding with any form of white supremacy, would likely suffer severe ‘brain-freeze’ if they realized that Jesus wasn’t white, although He is indeed SUPREME. Born of a human mother indigenous to the land of Palestine, His human genetics would have given Him a darker complexion and physical attributes more correctly recognized as Arabian, more than white!
But, all in good humor and thanks for the added info.
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