The Old Order Amish have made simplicity a way of life in America since its inception, but today people shell out big bucks to flirt with it "on vacation"

Guess which one is the example of terrible simplification.

The Ultimate Luxury Vacation: Doing Nothing in the Middle of Nowhere:

Simplicity is the ultimate luxury as travelers search for new ways to unplug this summer. The promise of escaping everyday life has always lured vacationers. But now people whose daily routines are consumed by digital demands and distractions are going to ever-greater lengths to do nothing in the middle of nowhere.

Paul of Tarsus, a man so possessed with his own fancies that he took them for oracles

 

Men are so possessed with their own fancies, that they take them for oracles; and are arrived to some extraordinary revelations of truth, when indeed they but do dream dreams, and amuse themselves with the fantastick ideas of a busy imagination.

-- Authorship disputed, The Causes of the Decay of Christian Piety (1667)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

-- Galatians 1:11f.

American education also failed Rod Dreher, who remains unaware that Christianity is the grandmother of Bolshevism

Jesus posits but one singular good transcendent above the world, including himself

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

-- Matthew 7:11

O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

-- Matthew 12:34

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?

-- Luke 11:13

And when the people were gathered thick together, he began to say, This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet.

-- Luke 11:29

And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.

-- Matthew 19:17

And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.

-- Mark 10:18

And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.

-- Luke 18:19

Rod Dreher is praying for 1.1 million dead at Auschwitz, 100+ BILLION dead since 50,000 BC are chopped liver

The chosen people.

Death makes these odds all even

 

If thou art rich, thou'rt poor;

For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,

Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,

And death unloads thee.

-- William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act 3, Scene 1

There are the sin forgivers, and then there are the sin retainers, like evangelical Pete Wehner

You've got to wonder if Pete Wehner ever seriously considered that evangelicals who give Trump a pass are instead practicing forgiveness.

What would forgiveness look like, Pete? Did Jesus ever once turn a blind eye to moral transgression?

But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. 

 

-- Matthew 6:15

Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots. 

 

-- Luke 23:34

Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more. 

 

-- John 8:11

Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained. 

 

-- John 20:23

Pete's clearly still a sin retainer, after all these years, just as many evangelicals have been in the past, for example in regard to Bill Clinton.

Kind of runs in the human family, but for a brief, shining moment.

The Deepening Crisis in Evangelical Christianity:

The enthusiastic, uncritical embrace of President Trump by white evangelicals is among the most mind-blowing developments of the Trump era. How can a group that for decades—and especially during the Bill Clinton presidency—insisted that character counts and that personal integrity is an essential component of presidential leadership not only turn a blind eye to the ethical and moral transgressions of Donald Trump, but also constantly defend him? Why are those who have been on the vanguard of “family values” so eager to give a man with a sordid personal and sexual history a mulligan? ...

[T]here is ... the undeniable hypocrisy of people who once made moral character, and especially sexual fidelity, central to their political calculus and who are now embracing a man of boundless corruptions. Don’t forget: Trump was essentially named an unindicted co-conspirator (“Individual 1”) in a scheme to make hush-money payments to a porn star who alleged she’d had an affair with him while he was married to his third wife, who had just given birth to their son.

This is priceless coming from an evangelical Christian, seeing that the foundation of evangelicalism requires buying into Pauline enthusiasm

“I Did Not Die. I Did Not Go to Heaven.”:

“The idea that someone could go to heaven and come back with visions and dreams and we should take that seriously is as far from historic evangelicalism as it’s possible to get,” Phil Johnson, the executive director of the ministry headed by MacArthur, the California pastor and author whose ministry Beth reached out to in 2012. “To me, one of the real signifiers that modern evangelical Christianity is badly astray and in serious jeopardy of even existing 50 years from now is the ease with which evangelicals buy into stories like this.”

It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.  I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. Of such an one will I glory: yet of myself I will not glory, but in mine infirmities.

-- II Corinthians 12:1ff.

The religious left is as unwoke as they claim is the right

The anti-Semitic theology behind the Christian Zionist lobby:

As clergy and people of deep faith and conscience, we do not know a God that ignores or justifies the suffering of one group of people for the security and comfort of others.

For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth. ... And repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face. ... Thou shalt be blessed above all people ... . And the LORD will take away from thee all sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou knowest, upon thee; but will lay them upon all them that hate thee. And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee. ... Moreover the LORD thy God will send the hornet among them, until they that are left, and hide themselves from thee, be destroyed. ... And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven: there shall no man be able to stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them.

-- Deuteronomy 7:6, 10, 14, 15, 16, 20, 24

On Jewish Chosenness and Israeli Chauvinism:

 

A survey of the “Beliefs, Observance and Values among Israeli Jews” conducted in 2009 found that 70 percent of Israeli Jews believe that Jews are the chosen people. Since 46 percent of Israeli Jews define themselves as secular according to the survey, the numbers indicate that even within the secular minority, at least one-third maintains a belief in Jewish chosenness, and that the concept has taken on shades of simple ethnic chauvinism beyond any original theological significance. This is reminiscent of the quip about secular Zionists who don’t believe in God but do believe that God gave them the land. ... Half of Israeli Jews (48 percent) believe Arabs should be transferred or expelled from Israel.

Folly most in quickest sense is found

If we had nought but sense, then only they

Should have sound minds which have their senses sound;

But wisdom grows when senses do decay,

And folly most in quickest sense is found.

-- John Davies (1569-1626)

What does an elite tribe do when it runs out of its own tribes to exploit?

It invents more tribes, expanding the number and morphing from Judaism for Jews into Judaism for the whole world by way of Pauline Christianity.

And, behold, I have given the children of Levi all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance, for their service which they serve, even the service of the tabernacle of the congregation. -- Numbers 18:21

If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; -- Philippians 3:4f.

For it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem. It hath pleased them verily; and their debtors they are. For if the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister unto them in carnal things. -- Romans 15:26f.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. -- Matthew 23:15

Men only recover their senses slowly, one by one

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

-- Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, 1841

Jesuits, like the pope, specialize in tampering with the word of God

No one who says goodbye to all that he owns can feed or clothe anybody, let alone himself. No one who leaves all and follows has a home into which to welcome anyone. Helping others means calling them into poverty, not out of it. The disciples were forbidden to enter into the way of the Gentiles, for he was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.

The Jesuits are free to believe as they wish, but they are not followers of Jesus.

Ye shall know them by their materialism

Most people nowadays do not realize at all how materialistic they are in themselves and their thought. They may be zealous in prayer and confession and have the word "God" for ever on their lips, they may even be priests by calling and conviction, and yet be materialists. Christian morality is, like every morality, renunciation and nothing else. Those who do not feel it to be so are materialists.

-- Oswald Spengler, 1933

So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

-- Luke 14:33