Mary the mother of Jesus attempted a family intervention

A plot for His assassination was secretly on foot. And at this juncture the incident of my text, which we owe to Mark alone of the Evangelists, occurs. Christ’s friends, apparently the members of His own family--sad to say, as would appear from the context, including His mother--came with a kindly design to rescue their misguided kinsman from danger, and laying hands upon Him, to carry Him off to some safe restraint in Nazareth, where He might indulge His delusions without doing any harm to Himself. They wish to excuse His eccentricities on the ground that He is not quite responsible--scarcely Himself; and so to blunt the point of the more hostile explanation of the Pharisees that He is in league with Beelzebub.

Conceive of that! The Incarnate Wisdom shielded by friends from the accusation that He is a demoniac by the apology that He is a lunatic! . . . 

There is nothing that commonplace men hate like anything fresh and original.

 

-- Alexander Maclaren (1826-1910), Exposition on Mark 3:21

At Christmas thoughts do not naturally turn to Mary's crazy, problem child of the Gospel of Mark

Bart Ehrman, December 2014, here:

Mark does not narrate an account of Jesus’ birth. Mark never says a word about Jesus’ mother being a virgin. Mark does not presuppose that Jesus had an unusual birth of any kind. And in Mark (you don’t find this story in Matthew and Luke!!), Jesus’ mother does not seem to know that he is a divinely born son of God. On the contrary, she thinks he has gone out of his mind. Mark not only lacks a virgin birth story; it seems to presuppose that they [sic] never could have been a virgin birth. Or Mary would understand who Jesus is. But she does not.

It’s no wonder that when Matthew and Luke took over so many of the stories of Mark, they decided, both of them, *not* to take over Mark 3:20-21. They had completely different view of Jesus’ mother and his birth.

Gay man conducts online poll with a good number of queer respondents asking why they're leaving Christianity, finds LGBT discrimination is the main reason

I'm shocked, right?

But why does this get treated as legitimate by Real Clear Religion when it's obviously biased and skewed?

Why Are People Leaving Christianity?

Brandon Flanery, Baptist News Global

A brief history of feminism

 

When you go to church, the person sitting next to you is very likely to be just fine with same sex marriage

 

Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.

-- II Corinthians 6:17

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.  

-- Revelation 18:4

2.3 million Methodists expected to flee United Methodism by the end of 2023 over LGBT and become independent to avoid the fate of the Episcopalians

 Unsurprisingly, the liberal denominations of the old Mainline Protestant world are the fastest to decline. The Episcopal Church just announced that in 2021 it lost 56,314 members while attendance dropped 36 percent from 2020. Sixty-two congregations were permanently closed. Average worship dropped from 55 to 21 persons. Ninety percent of Episcopal churches have fewer than 100 attendees on Sunday. 

Many Methodist congregations seek to escape this grim fate. And who can blame them?

More.

Act like a man

 Acquit thee bravely, play the man;

Look not on pleasures as they come, but go:

Defer not the last virtue; life's poor span

Makes not an ell by trifling in thy woe.

-- George Herbert

Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. 

 

-- I Corinthians 16:13

Jon D. Levenson thinks Yonatan Adler's thesis is very learned but problematic because Pentateuchal law is prescriptive and pre-Hellenistic

 Much more problematic, however, is Adler’s claim that before the Hellenistic period biblical law was perceived as descriptive and iconic, rather than prescriptive and to be obeyed by individuals. This misses the fact that the law collections in the Pentateuch appear within a framework of covenant, with their particular norms thus revalorized as covenantal stipulations. And covenantal stipulations are very much intended to be obeyed.

Thus, Deuteronomy, the book most imbued with the conceptions and idioms of covenant, time and again insists that its laws be carefully practiced and continually kept in mind. It promises blessings to those who heed that counsel and curses to those who violate it, proving faithless to the covenant. “For the word is very close to you,” reads the conclusion to one of its most memorable exhortations, “in your mouth and in your heart to practice it” (Deuteronomy 30:14). This was written long before anyone ever heard of Ptolemy II or the Hasmoneans.

More.

Like brute beasts we travel with the herd

 Like brute beasts we travel with the herd, and are never so solicitous for the rightness of the way, as for the number or figure of our company.

-- John Rogers (1679-1729)

The good we love for its own sake we obey

 It is not imaginable that men will be brought to obey what they cannot esteem.

 

-- Robert South

There is a kind of good we love both for its own sake and for its consequences.

-- Plato, Republic II, 357b,c

Finally, some really good reporting on how American Puritanism became a feature of the political left

 . . . according to Rothman . . . there is “a popular mythology that long ago outlived its usefulness,” he said in a direct Twitter message to Tablet, which “postulates that the vestiges of prudish American puritanism are exclusive to the political right.” Instead, he said, “with the policing and enforcement of moral frameworks again becoming a feature of the left, America’s vestigial puritanism is assuming a form that is far more historically familiar.” ...

“Today,” Rothman said in his message to Tablet, “as the left gravitates away from liberalism and toward progressivism, they are assuming many of progressivism’s conceits—chief among them, a messianic utopianism that views everything, even life’s most banal pleasures, through the prism of political activism.”

More.

The many are trusting, lazy-minded followers

 Most take things upon trust, and misemploy their assent by lazily enslaving their minds to the dictates of others.

-- John Locke

Michael Gerson has died

 

“Fate may do what it wants,” he said. “But this much is settled. In our right minds, we know that love is at the heart of all things."     

Obituary here.

You shall know them by their shrugging

 There is a kind of sluggish resignation, as well as poorness and degeneracy of spirit, in a state of slavery.

-- Joseph Addison

The road to ruin

 The ruin of a state is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners, and contempt of religion, which is entirely our case at present.

-- Jonathan Swift

Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) this summer rejected by 75% a statement condemning political violence

Reported here :

Elders on the debate floor objected to the resolution. One elder speaking against the statement said that without political violence, the Protestant Reformation and American Revolution wouldn’t have happened. “We’d all still be genuflecting and using holy water,” he said. 

The squeamish, elitist minority claims in response that “It’s not uncommon for evangelicals to not be too concerned whether there is historical pedigree to something they think is biblical.”

Yeah right, there's no historical pedigree WHATSOEVER, lol:  

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

Yeah, it's called The New Testament, but the rabbi has his own book to sell

 

What Jews Don't Know About Christianity Could Fill a Book

Jeffrey Salkin, RNS

All-hallown eve: Welcome to the 505th anniversary of the original pinned tweet

 

We are the antiques

 We have a mistaken apprehension of antiquity,

calling that so, which in truth is the world's nonage.

-- Joseph Glanvill

They're not innocents: The poets write what they know

 Folly and vice are easy to describe,

The common subjects of our scribbling tribe.

 

-- Wentworth Dillon

 

 

Why you are here

 The beams of light had been in vain display'd,

Had not the eye been fit for vision made;

In vain the author had the eye prepar'd

With so much skill, had not the light appear'd.

-- Richard Blackmore (1654-1729)

COVID-19 picked-off two already ailing Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod institutions of higher learning in New York and Oregon in 2020-2021

The Concordia University system must brace for yet another closure. Concordia College New York, a small, Lutheran liberal arts college in Bronxville, N.Y., will close this summer, it announced Thursday. ...

Concordia’s closure announcement leaves only six institutions in the Concordia University system. It began to shrink eight years ago, when Concordia University Ann Arbor was annexed by Concordia University Wisconsin in 2013. Five years later, Concordia College in Alabama, a historically Black college, closed due to falling enrollments and mounting debt. Concordia University in Portland, Ore., announced in February that it would close, citing a challenging and changing higher education landscape.

-- Inside Higher Ed, January 29, 2021 

For other college closings across the country since 2016, see here.

Vladimir Putin says the West is Satanic for rejecting moral norms

Putin says U.S. created nuclear PRECEDENT by bombing Japan and vows to 'smash' the 'satanic' West

Exhibit A, which you would never have seen in the popular press even 20 years ago:

 

When thoughts weigh heavy

 His pensive cheek upon his hand reclin'd,

And anxious thoughts revolving in his mind.

-- John Dryden

Locke against the right of primogeniture

 In scripture there is no such thing as an heir that was, by right of nature, to inherit all, exclusive of his brethren.

-- John Locke

Of verses sterling

 Beware of Latin authors all!

Nor think your verses sterling,

Though with a golden pen you scrawl,

And scribble in a berlin.

-- Jonathan Swift

All of Pope Francis' American appointments to cardinal have been the acolytes of a pervert, liar, and abuser of the highest order

It is disturbing that all of Francis’s American appointments to the College of Cardinals have been acolytes of Cardinal McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, DC and a pervert, liar, and abuser par excellence. 

It's quite a bit more than disturbing . . . 

None of this is remotely Catholic.

Well, there it is.

Read it all, here.

US evangelicals are no longer orthodox Christians

56 percent of evangelical respondents affirmed that “God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism and Islam,” up from 42 percent in 2020.  

A surprising 73 percent agreed with the statement that “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.”

60 percent of the evangelical survey respondents had some confusion about its third member, believing that “The Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being.”

57 percent also agreed to the statement that “Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.”  

More.

Masuccio Salernitano on the phony, immoral, infanticidal Franciscan and Dominican begging friars of 15th century Italy

  They cheat, steal, and fornicate, and when they are at the end of their resources, they set up as saints and work miracles . . . bring with them confederates who pretend to be blind or afflicted with some mortal disease, and after touching the hem of the monk's cowl, or the relics which he carries, are healed before the eyes of the multitude. All then shout 'Misericordia', the bells are rung, and the miracle is recorded in a solemn protocol. ... The nuns ... bring forth pretty little monks or else use means to hinder that result. And if anyone charges me with falsehood, let him search the nunneries well, and he will find there as many little bones as in Bethlehem at Herod's time. ... The best punishment for them would be for God to abolish Purgatory; they would then receive no more alms, and would be forced to go back to their spades.

 

 

-- Tommaso Guardati, aka Masuccio Salernitano (1410-1475), quoted in Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (London: Phaidon, 1945), 283f.

On the self-importance of the poets

 

 True poets are the guardians of a state,

And when they fail, portend approaching fate.

-- Wentworth Dillon

Portents are a dime a dozen

 Every unwonted meteor is portentous, and some divine prognostick.

-- Joseph Glanvill

Rod Dreher, so-called most important Christian thinker of our age, differs little from the superstitious fear-peddlers of any previous age

 On this day twenty years ago, a shocking sign appeared in New York. ... I remember standing there at the edge of Ground Zero, looking at my watch, waiting for the minute when, one year earlier, the first plane struck the north tower. That was also to be the signal for the start of the memorial service at Ground Zero. At that moment -- at that precise moment -- a ferocious wind blew in from the same direction that the plane had taken. It was uncanny. There was a hurricane far offshore, and this was its outermost fringe. Still, the timing was eerie. ... When I emerged out onto the street a few minutes later, the wind had stopped. I don't know what time it ceased to blow, but I would bet it was when the last name was read. ...

 

 The phone rang. It was my journalist friend, slightly freaking out. "Come over," she said. I took off. At her apartment, she led me into her home office, and pointed to something hanging on a wall. It was a small American flag, almost paper-thin, and very old. Judging from the number of stars on its field, I would say from the Revolutionary War era. It was mounted and framed under glass.  ... On this day, however, when she returned from Ground Zero, she noticed that it had been torn right down the middle. ... Both of us were, and are, Christian. The significance of this sign was not lost on us. ... I immediately interpreted the torn flag as a sign that God had withdrawn his protection from America, in judgment.

 

The whole thing is here.

There shall no sign be given unto this generation. 

 

-- Mark 8:12

 

Somebody has to pay for those French oysters, and his son's college education.

 

Might as well be you.

The true king does much with little

 This small inheritance 

Contenteth me, and's worth a monarchy.

Sufficeth that I have maintains my state
And sends the poor well pleased from my gate.

-- William Shakespeare, Henry VI, part 2, Act 4, Scene 10

. . . and the two fishes divided he among them all. 

 

-- Mark 6:41

Snoring upon the flint

Weariness can snore upon the flint,

when resty sloth finds the down pillow hard.
 

-- William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Act 3, Scene VI

Weary Jacob made stones for his pillows at Bethel

Progressive Walter Brueggemann offers not one text in the Bible which offers "a counter-position" friendly to homosexuality, let alone to bestiality, incest, or transgenderism

Because there aren't any.

 

 

 

 

The reason the Bible seems to speak “in one voice” concerning matters that pertain to LGBTQ persons is that the loud voices most often cite only one set of texts, to the determined disregard of the texts that offer a counter-position. ... The Bible contains all sorts of voices that are inimical to the good news of God’s love, mercy and justice. ... And where the Bible contradicts that news, as in the texts of rigor, these texts are to be seen as “beyond the pale” of gospel attentiveness.

More.

For Brueggemann all the following simply have to go, along with Romans 1:23ff. itself, because they are the enemy of the easy, welcoming gospel (which would strike St. Paul as quite the odious lie), even though there isn't any evidence that early Christianity reversed its antipathy for any of these perversions.

Make no mistake. There is no reason why the prohibitions against bestiality, incest, and transgenderism should stay when those against homosexuality must go.

Brueggemann should be made to answer that: 

 

Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.

-- Exodus 22:19

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. 

-- Leviticus 18:22

And the man that lieth with his father's wife hath uncovered his father's nakedness: both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

-- Leviticus 20:11

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

-- Leviticus 20:13

And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast.

-- Leviticus 20:15

And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. 

-- Leviticus 20:16 

The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.

-- Deuteronomy 22:5

Cursed be he that lieth with his father's wife; because he uncovereth his father's skirt. And all the people shall say, Amen.

-- Deuteronomy 27:20

Cursed be he that lieth with any manner of beast. And all the people shall say, Amen.

-- Deuteronomy 27:21

Cursed be he that lieth with his sister, the daughter of his father, or the daughter of his mother. And all the people shall say, Amen.

-- Deuteronomy 27:22

Cursed be he that lieth with his mother in law. And all the people shall say, Amen.

-- Deuteronomy 27:23

 

Brueggemann ignores a bunch of texts himself which contradict his cherished catch-all counter-idea that "The Gospel, unlike the Bible, is unambiguous about God’s deep love for all peoples."

For Brueggemann it couldn't possibly be that Jesus was an eschatological prophet to Israel only (Matthew 10, 15), bringing good news to its lost sheep who were impoverished by the rich who have their reward (Luke 7), who preached impending divine judgment of his generation (Luke 11) and never imagined a future church but rather the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God out of heaven wherein The Twelve would sit on twelve thrones judging the new Israel (Matthew 19, Luke 22).

There's plenty of contradictory evidence against Brueggemann's easy gospel of "welcome", he just ignores it.

Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few. 

 

-- Matthew 7:13f.

Brueggemann ignores all the evidence because he has a different agenda, about a kingdom that is "never fully here" but is only becoming.

Perhaps the most succinct example of that ignorance is summed up in his twisted claim that "The burden of discipleship to Jesus is easy". The burden of Jesus is in fact quite specifically light because the disciple has no possessions weighing him down, impeding his escape through the narrow gate, and no social obligations of work and family either, all of which were renounced because they hold one back. 

No man can be my disciple who does not say goodbye to everything that is his.

-- Luke 14:33

No one knows this Jesus anymore, not Paul himself, not today's church, and especially not Walter Brueggemann. 

Neocon speech writer for George W. Bush, Evangelical Michael Gerson is very angry with his brothers for not being angry, too

Trump should fill Christians with rage. How come he doesn’t?

The Trump movement is

inconsistent with Christianity by any orthodox measure. Yet the discontent, prejudices and delusions of religious conservatives helped swell the populist wave that lapped up on the steps of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. During that assault, Christian banners mixed with the iconography of white supremacy, in a manner that should have choked Christian participants with rage. But it didn’t.    

Is that disqualifying?

Like many of his fellow Christians, Gerson rejects the historical Jesus as eschatological prophet of the end of the world and instead believes in an unfolding, immanentized eschaton which realizes the universal rule of God through the church:

In the present age, [Jesus] insisted, the Kingdom of God would not be the product of Jewish nationalism. It would not arrive through militancy and violence, tactics that would contribute only to a cycle of suffering. Instead, God’s kingdom would grow silently, soul by soul, “among you” and “within you,” across every barrier of nation or race — in acts of justice, peacemaking, love, inclusion, meekness, humility and gentleness.       

Gerson's Trump critique is useful to the political objectives of Washington Post liberalism, but that liberalism all the same knows that his version of Christianity is nothing but a paper tiger, having co-opted its values long ago.

Maybe down deep Gerson knows this also.

He is a life-long sufferer of mental illness:

 

It would be odd for Jesus' opponents to say he wasn't yet fifty if he were actually only about thirty

 Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? 

-- John 8:57

Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased. And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli . . .. 

-- Luke 3:21ff.

The Mediterranean diet . . . of slaves

And the mixt multitude that was among them fell a lusting: and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick: But now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes.      

-- Numbers 11:4ff.

Labour tempereth greed

 As a man had a right to all he could employ his labour upon, so he had no temptation to labour for more than he could make use of.

-- John Locke

Former Milwaukee Catholic Archbishop Rembert Weakland (1977-2002), a prime architect of the national cover-up of sex abuse by priests, has died at 95

 Rembert Weakland was a bad man, and not just because he spent $450,000 of the faithful's tithes (which he paid back later) to pay off a male theology student with whom he had had an affair. Weakland, a lion of liberal American Catholics, came out as gay in 2009. ...

Weakland was Milwaukee's archbishop for a very long time, during most of the child sex abuse allegations against priests. The local church had to pay $30 million to settle the cases, eventually seeking bankruptcy protection. ...

For those who engaged in these cover-ups, the most important thing of all was the clergy, not the children who were molested, and their family members. That is the real legacy of Rembert Weakland, a godfather of the lavender mafia.  

Nobody knows this beat like Rod Dreher, here.

It passes strange that Fred Sanders reviews a book by the not orthodox Roger Olson which critiques liberal Christianity as not orthodox, without even mentioning it

 Olson . . . : “I have come to the same conclusion Machen did, and I think any orthodox Christian, however progressive they might be, must agree that liberal Christianity is not authentically Christian.” ... Olson repeatedly argues that liberal theology has “cut the cord of continuity” with its Christian past . . ..

Here.

Roger Olson is outside the catholic faith, denying that God is et unus immensus.

Pot calls kettle black, but you wouldn't know it from the review.

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.     

-- Psalm 90:2

American United Methodists scramble to exit the denomination over same sex marriage by the December 2023 deadline

The United Methodist Church—America’s third-largest religious body, with over 6.2 million members—is in the thick of its own [schism] over its teachings on sexuality. Hundreds of congregations have voted to leave the denomination, which had 13 million members world-wide as of 2020, and thousands more likely will. On Aug. 7, United Methodism’s second- and seventh-largest churches by attendance, both in the Houston area, voted to quit the denomination. 

What brought United Methodism to this divide was its decision-making body’s 2019 “Traditional Plan”—a document that affirmed its ban on same-sex marriage and mandated that all clergy be celibate if single and monogamous if married. That sets the church apart from nearly every other mainline Protestant denomination. The traditionalists won thanks to votes from conservative African delegates, whose churches have grown by millions even as the U.S. has declined by nearly the same magnitude.

... United Methodism has lost five million members in the U.S. since 1968 and will lose millions more. Mainline Protestantism has been sidelined—and it will take years for United Methodism’s schism to resolve.

More.

The inspiration for letting your light so shine before men is in Isaiah's condemnation of the phony, self-absorbed ritual fasts of the house of Jacob

 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. 

-- Matthew 5:16

Feed the hungry,
and help those in trouble.
Then your light will shine out from the darkness,
and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon.

-- Isaiah 58:10

Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 

-- Matthew 6:16

Grand Rapids, Michigan, where you're not much unless you're a rich Calvinist, once put beggars in jail 211 times between 2008 and 2011

 The ACLU said Grand Rapids enforced the state law 399 times between Jan. 1, 2008, and May 24, 2011. James Speet and Ernest Sims were among those arrested. They filed the original lawsuit. Speet held a sign, while Sims asked for spare change. ... 

The appeals court said that striking down the law was “appropriate because the risk exists, that, if left on the books, the statute would chill a substantial amount of activity protected by the First Amendment.” It noted that Grand Rapids police produced 409 incident reports related to begging. Thirty-eight percent of those stopped by police were holding signs, requesting help, with messages such as “Homeless and Hungry: Need Work.” The others involved verbal solicitations. In 43 percent of those cases, police immediately arrested beggars. In 211 cases, those convicted were sentenced directly to jail time. 

More.

Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. 

-- Luke 6:30

The Lutheran Reformation saved the Papacy

The greatest danger of all--secularization--the danger which came from within, from the Popes themselves and their 'nipoti', was adjourned for centuries by the German Reformation. ... This alone had made the expedition against Rome (1527) possible and successful, [and] so did it compel the Papacy to become once more the expression of a world-wide spiritual power, to raise itself from the soulless debasement in which it lay, and to place itself at the head of all the enemies of this reformation. ... In the face of the defection of half Europe, was a new, regenerated hierarchy, which avoided all the great and dangerous scandals of former times, particularly nepotism ... It only existed and is only intelligible in opposition to the seceders. In this sense it can be said with perfect truth that the moral salvation of the Papacy is due to its mortal enemies. ... Without the Reformation ... the whole ecclesiastical State would long ago have passed into secular hands.

-- Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (London: Phaidon, 1945), 79.