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blogging, culture, faith, insanitybytes22, Memorial Day, opinion, SBC, sexual abuse
I have come to the conclusion that those who try to bring heaven to earth, tend to do the precise opposite, they tend to unleash the greatest of all hellish horrors upon the earth. That is not dependent on theology or religion either. I am also thinking of all the dystopian nightmares inflicted on us by communism and assorted other godless tyrants.
Evil is a creepy thing, most of us justify it so well, we tend to think what we are doing is actually good. Was Hitler full of doubt, insecurity, and self loathing? I think not. Was Jim Jones planning to create a dystopian nightmare of mass suicide when he set out? Was it premeditated or just the inevitable consequence of a man thinking he was qualified to bring heaven to earth?
It’s a rather gloomy subject so let me stop with the mass murderers and get right to the heart of the matter. So many of us like the part in the Lord’s prayer about heaven and earth, so that we just gloss over the first part, thy will be done. I continue to be really frustrated by those, mostly those of a conservative bent, who wish to preserve Western civilization and return America to her former glory. It’s like they all have this utopian vision of what America used to look like before everyone started dying their hair blue and wearing yoga pants.
You know, that time everyone was middle class, believed in equality, and embraced moral values? There was no crime, we were all going to church, and life was good. I absolutely do not know of that time! It has never been a part of my reality. It’s also really painful listening to it, reading it in people’s words, because it renders me, and others like me, even more invisible then we ever were before. I want to whisper ever so gently, is it possible your imaginary heaven on earth was actually quite hellish for a great many people?? Indentured servants, slaves, the Irish, Chinese laborers, women, children, minorities, abuse victims, the poor?
That is what keeps me separate from the church at large, separate from a great many conservatives. That is what makes me recoil in horror when people start talking about “restoring moral values” in America. I’ve seen what we often hide behind our alleged “moral values,” and I want no part of it.
The Bible says, “all your righteousness are but filthy rags.” Nothing drives this point home better then reading about what has been going on within the Southern Baptist Convention, the protection offered to sexual abusers, the cover up, the silencing of victims. Worse yet, the arrogant responses from so many. There were at least 44 convicted sex offenders, that means convicted in a court of law, and hundreds of people are busy talking about protecting the ministry from false allegations! Then there are the situations where you have 32 victims speaking up and the first priority is just shutting them up and protecting the ministry?!
I don’t mean to single out the SBC either, I mean we’ve already seen this precise same thing in the Catholic church, Mars Hill, Hillsong, and Ravi Zacharias. Heck, you want the secular version, look at former Seattle mayor Ed Murray, protected and sheltered by “the woke,” by the egalitarians, for decades. He finally resigned but he’ll never be charged and some of his victims have now taken their own lives.
That gang of secularists had “moral values” too, they also thought they were going to create their version of heaven on earth, a liberal utopia, an egalitarian paradise. They also thought they were doing “god’s” will, “god” simply becoming a reflection of yourself, your own values, your own darkness.
This is the first Memorial Day where I am not really thinking of all those who gave their lives in war, but rather all those who have lost their lives in the civilian world, in our unseen war here at home, the casualties of domestic violence, child abuse, addiction, suicide, the collateral damage of so many of our policies born of our alleged “moral values.”
Barack Obama once said, “Cynicism is a sorry kind of wisdom.” Yeah, well if you aren’t deeply sorrowful and fighting a daily battle against cynicism, there’s not much truth in your “wisdom” and you’re probably just selling something.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
What? You don’t remember the time when America was literally “Heaven on Earth”? No one hurt anyone! We all sang worship songs in the streets. Everyone praised God and gave thanks for everything!? — LOL! yeah…me neither!
I’ve been pondering the “thy will be done” part of the Lord’s prayer over the past couple months and I thought about how God’s will is so much different than human will. God will is that His purpose and plans happen exactly as He intended and He desires that everyone worships Him and be thankful even in the worst of times. And most of all, that everyone comes to Him through faith in Jesus whom God sent to us for the forgiveness of sins (john 6:29).
Human will, however, is the complete opposite of that. Humans want our needs met first and our needs might include selfish desires and pleasures. We want evil banished, but evil to us is whatever we deem is evil, not actually based on God’s righteous definition of evil. Humans are just plain wrong in their understanding of God’s will and how suffering comes into play. We expect joy and happiness all the time and suffering shouldn’t be a part of it, but God’s will is that we suffer because He suffered to save humanity on the cross.
Thy will be done…powerful words….but we cannot forget the rest of that statement… “on earth, as it is in Heaven.” – As it is in Heaven…. lots to ponder there because a lot of things have taken place in Heaven that we know little or nothing about.
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Amen! God’s ways are not our ways.
Even I think I want peace, prosperity, and the alleviation of suffering, but then I go out and meet people who have have never really suffered, and one can hardly stand to be around them! They are often devoid of empathy, complacent, and totally self absorbed. Something really important is missing from the recipe.
This nostalgia for a past that didn’t even exist is nearly as annoying to me as our dreams of a new and improved progressive future.
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That is a very strange version of American history. I recognize that some might believe it, but there is also accepting both the good and bad that emerged from our nation. This is why, despite its anti-Catholic sentiments, I appreciated teaching Abeka history to my children. The writers neither shied away from the bad, nor were they afraid to speak the good. This country spread the gospel around the world and outlawed slavery and developed workers’ rights and encouraged new technology. I would much prefer to belong to this Western Civilization than one where Christians are martyred and women have few rights. There is no such thing as a utopia. Obviously…but there are benefits to living in a philosophically Christian society.
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I prefer to focus on the good too, but in the process of allegedly “spreading the gospel,” we also left a whole lot of children in Indian schools to die. In the process of “encouraging new technology,” we also engaged in eugenics programs. And of course, yet another Christian organization has just been shown to have aided and abetted the sexual abuse of children.
Our “philosophically Christian society” is also responsible for these atrocities and for the people who have been harmed by them. A big part of the divisions we have going in our country right now have to do with our hypocrisy, with our delayed response and complete lack of compassion towards those who are now suffering. We have so many homeless and addicted living along our freeways, you can shoot it all as Ukrainian war footage and nobody would question it.
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I don’t prefer to focus on the good. I simply don’t like the modern take where we only focus on how evil America is. It’s not honest. We aren’t a collective. We don’t collectively have a lack of compassion. We are a mixed bag of very bad, destructive philosophies due to our freedoms to hold them, and charitable, gospel-driven ones.
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Well, as if to demonstrate our “charitable gospel driven values,” one of the largest protestant orgs in America just released a list of convicted sex offenders and a 248 page report of how they have completely failed to protect children.
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It’s almost as if Beth Moore was right and there was a reason she jumped ship. The problem is predators go where there is prey, and the average person can’t wrap their mind around it and acts astonished when these kinds of scandals surface, even if they’ve been warned, usually by women who are called “bored mommy bloggers stirring up trouble.” I have nothing nice to say about the SBC leadership. Predators are of course not confined to churches. They’re also rife in other places where victims are easy to come by, like the public schools and the fostering system. Those places perpetuate it, but in churches I think there’s a fair amount of hubris combined with naivety that allows it to happen. And all of that still doesn’t change the good churches do, the generosity and carrying forth of the gospel that happens in spite of fractious and blind people.
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All true, Jill! Absolutely, it is not just churches which is why I mentioned the Seattle Mayor. The problem being, many of those preaching about “restoring moral values” to America were apparently also forcing young girls to get abortions so there would be no evidence of their sexual abuse. So we have this huge gaping wound bleeding out into our culture everywhere. A few of those victims might heal but the vast majority are going hate Christians, hate what they believe are our “moral values,” and want revenge. And I don’t blame them one bit.
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So you’re not a MAGA person after all?
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Ha! I am still a huge Trump fan. It is so ironic to me, those who hate him, those who don’t want him leading us anywhere are the “system,” they are the one’s in control, or as we would say back in the day, they are “The Man,” they just don’t seem to realize it. Trump is a populist, so making America Great Again, was about getting government out of the way and putting America back in the hands of the people.
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“Trump is a populist…”
I totally agree.
“…so making America Great Again, was about getting government out of the way and putting America back in the hands of the people.”
Trumpism was never about that, but most importantly, that was NOT Trump’s agenda at all. It pretty much represents any level his supporters which to make it represent… hence your own definition.
Ok, ok.. I started it… just was shocked at your separating MAGA from what you said in your post.. which I thought was the heart of MAGA… the “let’s roll the country back to the white entitlement and white domination glory days of the 50’s.” kinda thing.
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I just liked gas costing 1.79 a gallon and watching us get heroin and meth off the streets, Doug.
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Meth and heroin were off the streets?? I must have missed that day in all the chaos. (Right about now one of your followers will jump in here with Biden comparisons thinking I’m a Biden guy.)
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Reblogged this on Citizen Tom and commented:
jilldomschot, a commenter on insanitybytes22 ‘s post, has a point. insanitybytes22 forgets that everything is relative, including nation states and political/religious movements.
The United States now is a large country with a diverse population. That was not true at the founding. The cultural values that predominanted in 1776 were in some respects much better and some respects much worse. Of course, which cultural values were worse and which were better depend on who we ask.
What Conservatives think important is that that 1776 generation produced the Declaration and the Constitution. The values incorporated in these documents are Biblical. Whatever faults the founding generation possessed, they also possessed many virtues. They did a better job of protecting the rights of the average citizen than any people before them.
Our problem is since the 1830’s, starting in Massachusetts, we have turned more and more to government to educate us, and government-run schools have taught us to trust government and government solutions even when they are unconstitutional. Since the 1960’s government-run schools have taught us to detest anyone who opposes big government. Unfortunately, insanitybytes22 seems to have ingested some of these ideas.
Nevertheless, insanitybytes22 remains Conservative enough to support someone like Donald Trump. So, it would be stretch to point to her and say: “with friends like her who needs enemies?” It is probably more revelant wonder how any Conservatives manage to survive in the state of Washington.
So, I suggest you read insanitybytes22 ‘s post and remember, none is good (read Romans 3). We can all strive to be better, and we can forgive the flaws in others the same way we would hope to be forgiven if we shared the same flaws.
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I’ll second your notion of forgiving one another’s flaws.
I honestly don’t know how to wake conservatives up. For example, the SBC just released a report indication one of the largest protestant orgs had aided and abetted child sexual abuse, covered it up, and protected sex offenders. They released a 200 page list with more then 700 abusers operating in their churches. You just want to talk about 1776 and government run schools?
So Trump was not elected because he was a conservative. In fact, a ton of conservatives and Christians opposed him. He was elected because he was a populist, because he was able to convey the idea that he cared about the issues and challenges facing ordinary Americans.
If we actually care about winning future elections, conservatives are going to have to wake up and they are going to have to demonstrate that they are capable of considering the needs and well being of people besides themselves.
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There are a fair number of Conservative organizations, but there isn’t a national Conservative political party that amounts to anything. The Republican Party is as close to a national Conservative political party as there is, but the Republican Party is just a coalition of various interests groups, including Conservatives. Much of that coalition unfortunately (The Democratic Party has the same problem.), includes crony capitalists who just want to retain political power. What you call populism is the movement to wrest power away from crony capitalists.
Is Donald Trump a populist? Yes. Is Donald Trump a Conservative? Could be. That is because a Conservative is a specific kind of populist.
Because Conservatives approve of Trump’s policies, Trump is enthusiastically supported by the vast majority of Conservatives and their political organizations. The fact that some so-called Conservative news media personalities and publications don’t support Trump says more about them than Trump or the Conservative movement.
So, what about the SBC? Everything men create tends to become more and more corrupt over time. If we build a house, for example, we have to maintain that house and sometimes even rebuild it. The same is true of nations, organizations and movements.
The United States, because we have failed to properly educate our children, has lost its way. Most people don’t understand our country’s history or founding principles. They don’t know, appreciate, or value their role in making our government work.
I know little about the SBC, but I suspect most of the Christians who belong to the SBC are like most of the members of mainline denominations. They don’t know much about the Bible, and they have not got a clue about the organizational structure of their church.
We often refer to the Christian church, meaning the body of Jesus Christ. As a practical matter, however, the Christian Church is a movement, and this movement lacks energy in the United States and Western Europe because so many Christians in the Wesr are so ignorant and don’t care.
What does all that mean. The United States, the organizations within the United States, and the people of the United States all require a revival. Praying for and working for a revival is not the same as being an unrelenting critic.
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That’s a great comment, Tom. We really are plagued by crony capitalists and politicians far more loyal to their own interests than the needs of the people. And our churches really are filled with a lot of apathetic and complacent people, and also with a lot leaders more loyal to their own interests than the needs of the people.
Am I an unrelenting critic? Perhaps. It might even be deliberate and intentional! I am laughing Tom, can you imagine if we just told Jeremiah or Isaiah to stop complaining and go off quietly and pray for revival?
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The people Jeremiah and Isaiah prophesied to were not kind to them.
Jeremiah and Isaiah told the people of Israel how they had disobeyed and were disobeying God. They charged specific people, as such as the false prophets, with leading people astray. Instead of condemning people who were trying to obey God and failing, they went after people who had no intention of obeying God. These prophets called for repentance and explained what the future would be like if Israel failed to repent.
Note something especially important. Jeremiah and Isaiah spoke God’s words. God knows our hearts and the hearts of our fellow men and women; we don’t. Therefore, we can judge the conduct of another, but we cannot judge the souls of others. At best we can only observe behavior and determine as best we can whether someone cares about their family, friends or neighbors or behaves like a feral dog or swine.
Jeremiah and Isaiah condemned the feral dog and swine.
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Compared to Utopia every place sucks.
I don’t know anyone who thinks that America was ever this idyllic Utopia.
There will never be heaven on earth because of man’s flawed nature.
However, I admire America’s founders because they acknowledged man’s flawed nature and they tried to come up with a system which takes man’s flawed nature into account.(checks and balances etc.).
I happen to be one of those who unapologetically want to preserve Western civilization.
If we compare Western civilization not to Utopia but to real civilizations we have to conclude that it is the civilization with the most freedom for the individual, the highest standdard of living and the highest material wealth for more people than any other civilization.
For example, just a mere 200 years ago, travel was a privilege that only a few rich could enjoy. Thanks to technological progress which was a fruit of Western civilization, the railway, the car and the plane allowed more people than ever before to enjoy travel.,
The world’s first democracy in Athens was far from perfect, Large parts of the population like slaves, women etc. could not participate.
Yet, it would be extremely unfair to deny the greatness of the men who conceived democracy or the idea of democracy itself.
Neither do we have to assume that those who tasted democracy but who became later subjects of a monarchy thought of democracy as some kind of utopia when they yearned for their lost freedom.
Call me crazy, the world of 2019 was far from perfect and it was plagued with all kinds of problems and misery but if I could just flip a switch to go back in time I would do so without hesitation.
Conservatives are right when they lament the moral decay. Just look what all this woke s**t does to your children.
One doesn’t have to believe that the world was a utopia to see that some things have gotten objectively worse.
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Hmmm. Well, when reading your comment and other people’s, there is a rush to defend America and the brand that we call “Western civilization,” rather than to address the fact that the SBC seems to have spent decades churning out deeply traumatized individuals victimized by sexual abuse, many who are going to wind up hating the church, hating the hypocrisy of our alleged moral values, and likely (at least emotional and psychologically,) to be seeking revenge on America. That is a much greater threat to conservatism than teaching CRT in our public schools. I can argue against notions like CRT, but I can’t really argue against gaping wounds inflicted on people when conservative Christians were in charge of their lives. That is a trust issue that is really hard to heal.
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Just because there are those who pretend to uphold moral values and then they do horrible things doesn’t mean that the moral values are wrong.
Just because a lot of Christians do bad things doesn’t mean that Christ did teach bad things.
Just because there are politicians who preach democracy and practice tyranny doesn’t mean that the idea of democracy is wrong.
Let me be absolutely clear where I stand. There is nothing worse than to abuse or violate children. NOTHING! If I could have my way the punishment for such crimes would be much harsher than the death penalty. Covering up crimes against children to protect an institution is absolutely wrong.
The reason why I and others are defending moral values and Western civilization is because you throw all these things together with the horrible things that are done to children.
I grant you that to the victims of abuse the phrases “moral values” and “Western civilisation” ring hollow but the correct answer is, to clean up the institutions, not throw out the values with the bath water.
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I guess I would ask, is our Western civilization actually producing moral values?? I’m really not sure, I don’t know. I think we’ve reached a point on our journey where we need to start asking those questions. Is it possible we need to make some adjustments?
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Excellent, excellent questions.
Western civilization is in existential crisis because it is under relentless attack from postmodernism, moral and cultural relativism and cultural marxism.
Reason, logic and science are under attack from a woke ideology which considers math to be racist and which denies the existence of objective truth.
The West rests on three pillars: Greece, Rome and Israel.
Its foundations are Greek philosophy, Roman law and judeochristian morality.
The more we throw the judeochristian component out the window the less is our civilization producing moral values or if it is producing moral values they are either pagan values or worse, no values at all but nihilism.
The judeochristian view that we are created in the image of God gives intrinsic value to all human life.
When it comes to abortion we have moved past pagan cultures which understood that abortion is wrong and we have gone back to cultures which practiced child sacrifice.
Our civilization never was and never will be perfect. That’s why we always need to make adjustments.
If we want to improve it we have to put it always under critical examination.
However, that’s not what marxist deconstruction does. It critizises all things that are supposedly wrong with our civilizatiion without putting the alternative (marxism) under the same critical examination, thus avoiding to expose marxism as a far worse alternative.
Furthermore, marxist deconstruction refuses to compare our civilization with other civilizations, thus creating the impression that our flaws are unique flaws of Western civilization.
For example, they have you believe that slavery is a product of racist, white supremacist western culture when that is a blatant lie.
A cursory comparison with other civilizations througout history shows that slavery had existed in all continents, in all races, in all cultures and pretty much at all times. Heck, in the ancient world Greeks enslaved other Greeks and Romans enslaved pretty much people of every race. That alone should tell you that slavery had nothing to do with race. It was an universally accepted bad practice. The biblical acount of Exodus is an example of bondage practiced in Africa.
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Thank you for your thoughtful answer. It’s good to discuss these things.
I really don’t believe slavery had much to do with race at all. We do see slavery all throughout human history, and even today, and it comes in a variety of ethnic groups. Most of these labels and control of the narrative, are simply tactics designed to create division and class warfare. That said, there are still numerous people who have not reaped the benefits of Western civilization. We, meaning conservatives, need to learn how to respond to these kinds of failures, even if that just amounts to admitting they happen.
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Tom, Insanitybytes
After reading your posts this morning I wrote a post titled: Memorial Day 2022 Conundrum, to add my opinions to this issue which is basically a repeat of nothing new under the sun philosophy that we all need reminders to cope with when we listen or hear the news reports daily…
Regards and goodwill blogging.
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Good one, Rudy. Ecclesiastes has a great deal of wisdom to offer and it quite appropriate to this situation we find ourselves in.
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This is a really good post IB, especially the way it sparked a fabulous discussion in the comments section. I don’t have much to add except I enjoyed it thoroughly.
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Pingback: WHAT IS CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM? – Citizen Tom
Indeed; we never cease our display of our Designer’s sense of humor …
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