Scholarship which presses Matthew 10 for the sake of a high Christology focuses on a tiny sapling and misses the entire forest

 

 Seen here:

For example, one case that Pitre makes is that scholars are almost unanimous in their belief in the historical plausibility of Jesus’ demand that His disciples love Him more than their parents [Matthew 10:37]. But many scholars also agree that in a first-century Jewish context, the love of parents is second only to the love of God. Pitre thus persuasively argues that we must logically conclude that Jesus of Nazareth makes a demand of His followers that only the God of Israel can make. He quotes Rabbi Jacob Neusner, who says, “For, I now realize, only God can demand of me what Jesus is asking… In the end the master, Jesus, makes a demand that only God makes.”

This point of view comes from the introspective conscience of the West, not from the text.

The Jesus of Matthew 10 does not imagine our existence, that we would be born to live and worship him. The entire narrative is about the sending out of the Twelve and the imminent end of the world and about their role in it. Jesus actually elevates the disciples as fellow itinerant prophets. He does not demand their worship.

The Matthew 10 narrative is the eschatological prophet sending out his disciples to evangelize Israel, which they will not complete before the end of the world comes, the climax of which is the coming of the Son of man:

But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord.

The impending judgment of the world demands a kind of repentance which turns away from all conventions of family, work, and life. It is not simply a question of loving parents more than their master, but also of sons and daughters.  The narrative describes a climactic descent into social chaos involving the persecution of Jesus' true and few followers by their very own kin:

And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. ... He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward;    

This is not about Christology, but about eschatology and the cost of discipleship. The price is intensely personal.

There is hardly a more vivid repudiation of the idea of the Christian family anywhere in the gospels, let alone of a high Christology.

Donald Trump is again taught the meaning of Homo proponit sed Deus disponit but it obviously won't do him any good

 

 Man proposes but God disposes.

The locution belongs to Thomas von Kempen (1380-1471), Imitation of Christ 1.19. It is the template for the American adage that "the president proposes but the Congress disposes".

In America the power of the purse rests in the people's representatives in the House and Senate assembled. It does not rest in the hands of one man.

Donald Trump has once again been taught this lesson about who's boss around here, and that the president can't always get what he wants.

On Thursday he suddenly sprang the wish for an elimination of the US national debt ceiling entirely, which is what Democrats have long wanted. He then hedged for at least an extension of the time limit for a decision about it through Jan 30, 2027 after the primaries, but he didn't get that either, let alone an extension into 2029 after he's out of the picture. Congress taught him similar lessons multiple times during his first presidency, but he obviously learned nothing.

The compromise passed by the House and the Senate overnight funds the government through March 14, 2025, and forces Trump to deal with the debt ceiling in 2025. He promised to primary any Republican in 2026 who voted for that.

He's going to be very busy!

He'll have to primary 170 Republicans in the US House lol, which I'm sure will smooth the way to getting passed what he wants passed there the next two years lol.

Trump's threats aren't just rash. They are idle, and self-defeating to boot, displaying nothing so much as his impotence.

Democrats who said they feared another Hitler were just lying to their fool followers, or were the fools themselves.

 

 

Who needs The New York Times?

 Provok'd by those incorrigible fools,

I left declaiming in pedantick schools.

-- John Dryden

The comments to this are appalling:

The Shock of Faith: It’s Nothing Like I Thought It Would Be

Rod Dreher: The UFOs are full of demonic entities, you see

Hal Lindsey and Larry Norman hardly exhausted the market for bad popular theology lol.

The drone sightings over New Jersey are but the latest demonstration of the fallibility of eyewitness testimony

 I see men as trees, walking.

-- Mark 8:24

Myths Christians tell themselves: In Christianity, humanity was not disposable ... In this way, the Christian God was radically different

 

Luke, the Greek

On the Nativity and Greek Myths

Andrew Fowler

 

Here was not only a god, but the God who loved humanity, rather than one who toyed with them as pawns like the Greek gods and goddesses. In Christianity, humanity was not disposable; and Jesus died for creation, as opposed to the people dying to please the gods. In this way, the Christian God was radically different.

 

If only it were so simple.

 

As myths telling tales of disposable humanity go, the reality has been that since the time of Christ a staggering number of human beings, roughly 50 billion, have died on planet Earth.

 

What has been the purpose of all those lives and of all those deaths? Have those been radically different in comparison with the more than 50 billion who lived and died before Jesus ever arrived on the scene?

 

One can argue convincingly that our lives have been better on balance, but hundreds of millions have come and gone in the Christian era itself who have suffered just as miserably as those who had come and gone before. And in the world right now the leading cause of death is abortion, some 70 million every year. None of them will ever be impressed by our home decor, and we will be disposed of as surely as they have been, but not soon enough for our crimes.

 

 

People recoil from reality and tell themselves tales to explain it and cope with it. Christians have been no exception, and have done the very same thing with their own religion. They have shunned the real content of their own scriptures which tell a different tale from the one encapsulated by the simple promise of everlasting life in John 3:16.

That was the tale of the good news for the few and the bad news for the many.

 

Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. ... Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. ... Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. ... There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out.

 

-- Luke 13:3,5,24,28

 

And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.

 

Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.

 

Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. 

 

-- Luke 17:26ff.

 

This exclusive tale failed, and the world went on living and dying as before.

 

To cope with the failure, the Christians themselves replaced the way of the few by the inclusive way for the many which we now hear everywhere at Christmas since the first century. The former was falsified by events, but the latter is unfalsifiable because it is by definition beyond our ken. Some die and go to heaven. Some die and go to hell. It cannot be proven, but it also cannot be disproven. It is therefore the best of myths. It is durable. It helps people cope with the ugly facts of life and death. It gives hope to one third of the world's population, 2.38 billion people, the world's largest and most widespread religion, or so Artificial Intelligence tells me.

 

And if somehow I am wrong and this tale is in fact found to be falsifiable in some way some day, I am confident we will replace it again, because we are nothing if not myth-makers. We are not radically different, even if our God is. We are deceitful above all things.

 

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

-- John 3:16

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. 

 

-- Galatians 2:20

 

 

The Roman Catholic miracle machine just keeps pumping them out, this time in the spirit of trendy inclusiveness lol

They really had to reach back for this one.

 Lourdes confirms 71st miracle — the first for an English speaker; miracle occurred in 1926

The miracle at the French Marian shrine actually occurred in 1923, but what is important, you see, is that the Lourdes Bureau confirmed it in 1926. But because of communication difficulties, the Archbishop of Liverpool never got the necessary documentation until now.

The subject had lost use of his right arm, suffered from epileptic seizures, and had partial paralysis in his legs due to "medical treatment" after being wounded in 1915 during the Great War. He was "immediately, instantly" cured by immersion in the waters of the spring at Lourdes, on the third day of a pilgrimage, of course. 

“And John Traynor is the first case of healing of an English-speaking patient,” de Franciscis said. “Most of the miracles are French. There are Italians too, a Belgian and a German. But there were not any English speakers yet.”

“I am personally sensitive to this,” the doctor concluded with a smile. “I myself am Italian, born in Naples, but of an American mother, from Connecticut!”

 

 

All's fair in love and war again

 

 Against such lewdsters, and their lechery,

Those that betray them do no treachery.     

 

-- William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 5, Scene 3

I miss the days when every family had just one

 

Rod Dreher is going to need a better book, a degree in Greek from Dallas Theological Seminary, and three more wives if he hopes ever to compete with Hal Lindsey

 

 

 Hal Lindsey's The Late, Great Planet Earth was translated into 50 languages and sold 35 million copies by the year 2000.

In 2020 Dreher reported his The Benedict Option had sold over 70,000 copies. His Live Not By Lies has sold over 200,000 copies, "by far my bestselling book".

 

Meanwhile the British and Foreign Bible Society estimated in 2021 that printed copies of the Bible number somewhere between 5 and 7 billion, as reported here.  Just between the invention of the printing press in 1454 and 1815, it is estimated that 1.3 billion copies alone were produced.

 

Signs and wonders, miracles and prophecies, sell.

 

Is it an accident then that Dreher's latest book is a book about all this woo-woo? "No one but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." Methinks of Lindsey Dreher doth protest too much.

 

"unconventional beliefs regarded as having little or no scientific basis, especially those relating to spirituality, mysticism, or alternative medicine: some kind of metaphysical woo-woo". 

 

Hal Lindsey's dispensational premillennialism really changed his life lol

 

 He got rich off the book, The Late, Great Planet Earth, 1970, and had four wives.

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.  

-- Romans 12:2

Lindsey accrued a fortune with his book sales, media appearances, and multimedia products. In 1977, Publisher’s Weekly described him as “an Adventist-and-Apocalypse evangelist who sports a Porsche racing jacket and tools around Los Angeles in a Mercedes 450 SI.” In 1981, the Los Angeles Times reported that Lindsey was making “thousands of dollars a week” from combined sales of books, films, and cassette tapes. He also kept up a busy schedule of public speaking and consulting, meeting with low- and mid-level government officials around the globe to advise them on the future. ...

Lindsey’s second divorce—and subsequent third and fourth marriages—raised questions about his character for many evangelicals. But the biggest blow to his reputation was his failed predictions.

More.

Mark Tooley correctly views Hal Lindsey, a disciple of Robert Thieme, among the vanguard of those who led the way to post-denominational evangelicalism, not mentioning the role of others in this such as street preacher and itinerant evangelist David Wilkerson, whose 1962 book The Cross and the Switchblade was immortalized by a film version starring Pat Boone, also in 1970.

 

 

 

Elon, Donald, and the Peter

 

 Elon, Donald, and the Peter

Each and every is a cheater

One had five and one had seven

One has even had eleven

Children loved by God in heaven

Make the blood boil in the creeper

 

-- Johnny

Gay billionaire, 39, can't understand why Muslims just won't be libertarians, you know, like everyone else

 Mike Solana is the protege of Republican Peter Thiel, another gay billionaire.

 

We've gone from The Devil Made Me Do It to The Church Made Me Do It

 Oh right, the Church made me eat the donuts.

What a stupid, unserious thing to say.

If you want to know why England is now ruled by its insane Labour Party, you are looking at it.

 

In the real world abortion is the leading cause of death, 73 million, but in France that is prohibited information

 

 The French media regulator has fined the conservative channel CNews €100,000 for, during a Catholic programme, saying that abortion is the world’s leading cause of death. The episode reveals the extent to which the debate on abortion is deadlocked in France.

In February 2024, presenter Aymeric Pourbaix, during the Catholic programme “En quête d’esprit,” broadcast every Sunday on the conservative channel CNews, showed an infographic on the causes of death, ranking abortion as the leading cause, with 73 million deaths each year worldwide. That translates to 52% of annual deaths, far ahead of cancer (10 million) and smoking (6.2 million).

The journalist’s comments sparked a wave of indignation in the mainstream press, on the grounds that abortion cannot be considered a “cause of death” because the foetus should not be considered a living being. ...

Reported here.

See current year for yourself under Health.

This is the absolute state of conservatism today under Donald Trump, who has nominated this man to run The Department of Defense

 

The perplexed losers of politics

 One or two rules, on which their conclusions depend, in most men have governed all their thoughts; take these from them and they are at a loss, and their understanding is perfectly at a non-plus.

-- John Locke

Exit polling indicates that Catholics turned out decisively for Donald Trump

 

An NBC News exit poll shows that Catholics preferred Trump-Vance over Harris-Walz by a whopping 58%-40% (with Catholics representing 22% of all voters). Among white Catholics, the margin was 61%-35%. The Washington Post exit poll shows a 56%-41% margin.

The state-by-state margins in pivotal swing states are likewise extraordinary. 

According to data collected and posted by the organization Catholic Vote, Catholics in Michigan voted Trump-Vance over Harris-Walz by an astounding 20%. In Pennsylvania, Catholics were likewise decisive for Trump, by 14%. In Wisconsin, it was 16%. In North Carolina, 17%. In Florida, the margin was astounding: 29%. 

More.

 

A prophet without honor in his own country

The New York Times religion columnist Ross Douthat accurately predicted the outcome of the 2024 US presidential election. 

The commenters on election day, for the most part, weren't having it, notably the ones who thought it was invalid simply because it hadn't changed over time even though the Democrat candidate did.

Some people just don't get it that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

People are credulous

 

 Wise judges have prescribed, that men may not rashly believe the confessions of witches, nor the evidence against them. For the witches themselves are imaginative; and people are credulous, and ready to impute accidents to witchcraft.

-- Francis Bacon

Rick Steves and his new bishop girlfriend are emblematic of what's gone wrong with Tim Walz' Lutheran denomination and with politics in the Pacific Northwest

 Rick is a board member on the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

NORML, get it?

He identifies with liberalism and progressivism.

His Wikipedia entry says he divorced his wife in 2010 and is a fan of liberation theology lol, a 1971 invention of the recently deceased Gustavo Gutiérrez, a Peruvian Catholic Theologian.

LINO. Lutheran in name only.

Of true charity

  

 It is no great matter to live lovingly with good-natured and meek persons; but he that can do so with the froward and perverse, he only hath true charity.

-- Jeremy Taylor

All foods are clean

And I heard a voice saying unto me, Arise, Peter; slay and eat. But I said, Not so, Lord: for nothing common or unclean hath at any time entered into my mouth.  But the voice answered me again from heaven, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. 

-- Acts 11:7ff. 

Clueless Rod Dreher: If young people demand a sign, by golly Christians should give it to them (buy my new book all about it!)

 

 The number of ex-Christians continues to grow, especially among the young, but there has been a significant and unexpected change. Atheism is mostly dead among the young — but they aren’t coming back to Christianity. They are going to various forms of the occult, as well as taking up using psychedelic drugs.

Why? Because they are desperate to have an experience of transcendence, of mysticism. They need to have an experience that tells them that there is more to life than mere materialism. As concerned as we should be about this development, it also offers us Christians an opportunity. It will continue to be hard — harder than ever, maybe — to convert people by using reason. But [we can make inroads] if we talk about the miracles of Padre Pio and others, if we talk about approved Marian apparitions, if we talk about the reality of spiritual warfare in the stories of people like the late exorcist Gabriele Amorth, and Father Carlos Martins, the popular American exorcist whose podcast The Exorcist Files is not only entertaining, but has lots of strong practical advice. 

-- The shameless grifter, quoted here

 

And the Pharisees came forth, and began to question with him, seeking of him a sign from heaven, tempting him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, Why doth this generation seek after a sign? verily I say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto this generation. ... Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

-- Mark 8:11-12, 38      

An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it ...

-- Matthew 12:39

A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it ...

-- Matthew 16:4

This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it ...

-- Luke 11:29

 

Like Melania Trump, Kamala Harris sees no room for compromise on abortion

 

I don’t think we should be making concessions when we are talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body.

-- Kamala Harris 

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 

-- I Corinthians 6:19

Perhaps Trump's funniest joke at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner for Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of New York

 

Signs and wonders and miracles, oh my: When you've seen one, you've seen them all

 

  No wonder to us, who have conversed with too many strange actions, now to wonder at any thing: wonder is from surprise, and surprise ceases upon experience.

-- Robert South

Religion Unplugged story about how politics influences US Protestant pastors' perceptions of church budgets completely misses two data outliers in 2018

 

 Pastors Paint Poor Picture Of Economic Impact On Churches

“Overall, pastors’ perceptions of the economy’s impact on their churches are statistically related to the pastor’s own politics. Since both politics and economics are external factors to a local church, it is not surprising that the influences become combined for some,” said McConnell. “More surprising is that pastors report actual offerings which fit these differences in political leanings.”

In 2018, under Donald Trump, an astounding 45% (green), a record high in the data going back to The Great Recession, said the economy was having a positive impact on church budgets, and an equally astounding 14% (blue), a record low in the data, said the economy was having a negative impact. 

It's right there in the graph, but it goes completely unremarked.

Political differences in any other year notwithstanding, 2018 looks like an amazing year of consensus among US Protestant church pastors from both sides of the political aisle, agreeing that things were pretty damn good. 

2018 had marked a notable shift for the Trump presidency, which wasted its first year in office trying to repeal Obamacare and quickly pivoted to the economy, which Larry Kudlow famously wanted front-loaded in 2017 instead of the healthcare issue. Almost immediately in 2018 the Trump administration began talking about an economic boom in the wake of the passage of its tax cut package late in 2017. And if you paid attention to the conservative media, the narrative built into a crescendo in 2018 so that by September of that year even Noah Smith, no right winger, for Bloomberg was talking about it as an actual fact.

Was it? 

If you and your kin had suffered under the effects of the 2009 crisis, which just went on and on and on under Barack Obama, it sure seemed like it. The end of the drought for these people, who were dying of thirst, was deeply felt, and explains why the memory of what happened to them continues to exert such a powerful influence on support for Donald Trump in 2024. Barack Obama and the Democrats did little for them. That is how we got here.

In relative terms in comparison with past booms, however, there were many indicators which were improving but were not really stellar, and some not really improving at all, including on both fronts full time jobs, wage growth, GDP growth, new home sales, housing starts, average age of vehicles on the road, road travel, growth of not in labor force, inventories, and industrial production. To critical thinkers, the economic boom narrative seemed exaggerated.

But perception is everything, and it's NOT surprising that the story missed that. Elites specialize in overlooking the little people.

No one understands the appeal of Donald Trump except all the millions he has helped, clinging to their guns and their religion.

 

   

The idea that Christopher Columbus was a Jew is based on a preposterous chain of evidence

 

 The chain of custody of the body is hopelessly broken. We know nothing about its integrity over almost 400 years before the 20th century.

"there are traits compatible with Jewish origin" ... The DNA-driven results are “almost absolutely reliable" ... Columbus died in Valladolid, Spain, in 1506 but had wished to be buried on the island of Hispaniola ... His remains were taken there in 1542, then at least some of them moved to Cuba in 1795 and then to Seville in 1898."

Story here.

Buon Giorno Di Cristoforo Colombo!

 

We peevish Protestants, the angry Lutherans

 

  What though I know her virtuous,

And well deserving; yet I know her for

A spleeny Lutheran, and not wholesome to

Our cause.

-- William Shakespeare, Henry VIII, Act 3, scene 2

Melania Trump is the October Surprise, throws Hail Mary for abortion 33 days before the election

 Either she really, really, really does not want to go back to DC, hoping conservatives will abandon Trump over this and cause him to lose.

Or her husband thinks this will help him with pro-abortion women, who are 64% of all women, many of whom believe, incorrectly, that Trump would sign a national abortion ban.

Donald Trump officially supports the status quo ante to which the overturning of Roe v Wade has returned the nation, in which the individual states decide whether and to what extent abortion should be allowed.

His position is incompatible with Melania's uncompromising views, suggesting her timing of her announcement is designed to sabotage his campaign.

 

Yeah, imagine that Jimmy Carter taught "imagine there's no religion" to his Sunday School Class for most of his adult life

 The most cringe-worthy thing I've seen in a veritable sea of cringe-worthy in a long while.

Thirty paragraphs into a story touting Joe Biden's popularity with Catholics, Politico admits he lost the white Catholic vote nationally by 15 points

 

 

Kamala Harris’ Pennsylvania Problem: Joe Biden’s local ties and cultural roots kept him competitive in culturally conservative northeastern Pennsylvania. Harris’ prospects in the heavily Catholic, working-class region there are dicier:

A Brookings analysis earlier this year by University of Pennsylvania professor John DiLulio noted that Hillary Clinton lost the overall white Catholic vote by 33 points in 2016, but four years later, Biden cut that deficit in half, losing by only 15 points.     

 

The story never once mentions that J. D. Vance, Trump's running mate, is a 2019 convert to the Catholic faith and might represent as big a challenge for Harris as her abortion advocacy and her grilling of "a Catholic judicial nominee about whether he could remain impartial due to his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a respected Catholic fraternal organization".

Deeply spiritual Joe Biden and Kamala Harris really like the OT books written by priests of the NT church and the practitioners of palmistry lol

"That's not in Ecclesiastics" in minute 37:00

 

Social media is a waste of time

 

 

 It is an ill habit to squander away our wishes upon paltry fooleries.

-- Roger L'Estrange

I'm so old I remember when the pope excommunicated Martin Luther for doing this very thing Pope Francis recommends American Catholics do in this election

 

“Not voting is ugly,” the 87-year-old pontiff said. “It is not good. You must vote.”

“You must choose the lesser evil,” he said. “Who is the lesser evil? That lady, or that gentleman? I don’t know."

"Everyone, in conscience, (has to) think and do this.”       

-- Pope Francis, quoted here

 

Since your most serene majesty and your highnesses require of me a simple, clear, and direct answer, I will give one, and it is this: I cannot submit my faith either to the pope or to the council, because it is clear that they have fallen into error and even into inconsistency with themselves. If, then, I am not convinced by proof from Holy Scripture, or by cogent reasons, if I am not satisfied by the very text I have cited, and if my judgment is not in this way brought into subjection to God's word, I neither can nor will retract anything; for it cannot be either safe or honest for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.

-- Martin Luther, quoted here 

 

Hundreds of millions can't be wrong: Providence, the magazine of Christian realism, laughably redefines barbarism out of existence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This guy's problem isn't that he doesn't know what barbarianism is, it's that he doesn't know what civilization is, which was born in a tiny country in the Mediterranean with a small population of just a few million.

 

Can you guess which one?

 

These Are Not Barbarians

Robert Nicholson 

“This is not a clash of civilizations,” the prime minister continued. “It’s a clash between barbarism and civilization. It’s a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life. For the forces of civilization to triumph, America and Israel must stand together.”

The speech went on for almost an hour, conveying a clear picture of the high-stakes war to which the US is unwittingly a party. By the end, however, I was still reeling from the analytical flaw embedded in the first few lines.

On one hand, Netanyahu is right. The actions of Hamas on Oct. 7 were barbaric, at least in a colloquial sense. The Iranian regime and its proxies threaten the US-led order. Israel needs all the help it can get.

Yet he’s also wrong. Our enemies are not barbarians. They are highly-intelligent defenders of a rival civilization who want to destroy our way of life for reasons we don’t care to understand. More importantly, they are supported by hundreds of millions of Muslims—the majority, not just the mullahs in Tehran—who, inspired by a shared understanding of the Islamic tradition, deem the killing of non-Muslim civilians as legitimate for the same reasons the ancient Israelites killed the Canaanites: because God said so.

Yeah, if hundreds of millions applaud crashing planes into the Twin Towers on 9/11 and the rape, torture, and murder of 1,000+ Israelis on 10/7, they must have a point.

Can you tell I'm disgusted?

And the assertion of immoral equivalence between Islam and Judaism is breathtaking, which isn't designed to do anything but undercut the moral superiority of Christianity and the West in the fight against Islam and other evils, like The Empire of Japan, whose holocaust in Asia is on the lips of no one like Nazi Germany's is and shouldn't have been ended by dropping the atomic bombs, according to this lunatic.

That Christians like this aren't laughed off their own stage isn't a sign that they are correct. It's a sign that Christianity has become wholly empty-headed and incapable of defending itself. London has become Londonistan in our lifetime, now infamous for knife and acid attacks by Islamists. Enoch Powell predicted it in the 1960s, but the prophet is without honor in his own country.

Barbarism isn't the "extreme outlier". It's in every man. Christianity used to teach this, as did Aristotle, and the prophet Jeremiah, but not Nicholson, nor George W. Bush for that matter, whom Nicholson resembles perfectly:

True barbarians . . . are rare in our world. ... To pretend as if hundreds of millions of Muslims who see the Hamas massacre as morally justified—and who condemn the US preoccupation with Israel’s security—are depraved savages is to insult both them and ourselves. They are merely drawing on a tradition different than ours.   

If I had a subscription to this rag I would end it.