Christians cannot agree that censorship is unwise

"I can write no more" -- Thomas Aquinas, 1273

 

How could they if they are rightly censoring themselves?

Can Everyone Agree That Censorship Is Unwise? 

by Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal

 

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

 

Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. ... But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: -- Matthew 15:11, 18f.

 

Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. ... Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: -- Ephesians 4:29, 31

 

But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. -- Colossians 3:8

 

If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain. -- James 1:26

 

And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. ... But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. ... Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. -- James 3:6, 8, 10

 

For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile: -- I Peter 3:10

 

The column says "free speech is what saves us from civil war".

Christianity says that speaking freely shows that one has already lost, is defeated, and is a prisoner of the war.

To Jesus, much-speaking is of no value, and comes from evil:

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. -- Matthew 6:7;

But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. -- Matthew 5:37. 

 

  

Does a spring pour forth from the same opening fresh water and brackish?

 Why the **** does everyone swear all the ******* time?

 

The mind which wrote this essay is a busy ditch, for which unsurprisingly the old concept of the vulgar is unimagined country. Accordingly, when it tires of being crass it is capable only of infelicity:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A nodding beam or pig of lead,

May hurt the very ablest head.

 

-- Alexander Pope

His prattling tongue

His tongue, his prattling tongue,

had chang'd him quite

To sooty blackness, from the purest white.

-- Joseph Addison

And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity ... it defileth the whole body ... it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

-- James 3:6, 8 

But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. 

-- Matthew 5:37

Phil Jenkins never tells you the crackpot solution of Ellen G. White to "The Great Disappointment"

Namely, The Investigative Judgment, a doctrine wholly derived from "a charismatic prophetic leader" and not found anywhere in Scripture, here:

"The Adventists grew out of the millenarian fervor that swept the United States in the 1840s. In 1844, William Miller warned of the Christ’s imminent return and the world’s destruction. In fact, he did so twice, and the double failure provoked what is termed the Great Disappoint­ment. A rem­nant of Millerites then reconstructed their movement under the visionary leadership of New England–born Ellen G. White."

Seventh-day Adventism is a failed apocalyptic cult, not unlike Christianity itself.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. By their fruit ye shall know them. "Does a spring pour forth from the same opening fresh water and brackish?" -- James 3:11

Phil Jenkins should know better, but practices a form of political correctness all too characteristic of the contemporary academic community by not addressing Seventh-day Adventism's raison d'être. Too prickly no doubt for The Christian Century, and for his career. So much for thinking critically, living faithfully.

The religion of Ben Carson does no real harm in the world, except insofar as its adherents are occasionally no better than your average criminal, which Jenkins does mention. Thank God for small favors, I suppose.

But Adventism is still nuts.