The Solitary End: Can You Handle The Truth?

Well, no matter. You will handle it all the same.

A fellow traveler to the grave captures it beautifully:

From the moment we are born, the possibilities ahead of us contract. Each moment sets one on a path which eliminates all other possible paths. Life is one giant contraction. To decide to go one way means one can never go on the other journeys available at that moment. If one decides, at age eighteen, to go to NC State University, to use an example, one eliminates all the other roads for life and spouses and jobs and experience which would have led through, say, UNC-Chapel Hill or Duke or Clemson. This is true for every single day of our lives.

As one ages, this awareness becomes particularly acute. The contraction becomes palpable. One begins to see in one's sights the pinpoint toward which all our days are converging. The number of decisions one still has to make in the future dwindles. The contraction continues until at the moment of death the self becomes a single point of consciousness. One must at the end let go of all family, friends, and all outside experience itself so that one becomes a solitary self. Finally even that point of light is darkened. The almost infinite possibilities present at birth end at that one dot.  

This awareness of mortality is not simply the awareness that somewhere in the distant future there will be an end. We experience the loss every day.  The contraction is continuous. The passing of time is nothing other than the experience of death. Loss and memory and longing are a form of the grave. We feel it when we look at baby pictures of long grown children or see a snapshot of a movie theatre in our youth that was torn down decades earlier. Nostalgia is mourning. Death is not a moment one encounters at the end of life. It is a condition one lives in. Mortality, the condition of being subject to death, pervades our creaturely existence. It is the sea in which we swim.

Read more from this wise man, Paul Gregory Alms, at http://lrast.blogspot.com/2010/08/mortality-thrash-metal-and-church-by.html .


It reminded me of Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act Five, Scene Five, here, where each tomorrow creeps in to the last, becoming shadowy yesterdays of nothing:

SEYTON
The queen, my lord, is dead.


MACBETH
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

The Magical Thinking of the True Believers, Right and Left

Frank Bruni for The New York Times, here:

[T]here’s magical thinking in secular life . . . it springs from a similar yearning for easy, all-encompassing answers[.] ...

Faith-based is right. We all have our religions, all of which exert a special pull — and draw special fervor — when apprehension runs high and confusion deep, as they do now. And if yours isn’t a balanced-budget amendment and a government as lean as Christian Bale in one of his extreme-acting roles, it might well be a big fat binge of Keynesian stimulus spending. Liberals think magically, too, becoming so attached to a certain approach that they wind up advocating it less as option than as panacea.

What's Bigger Than The Bond Market?

IDIOT, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot's activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but "pervades and regulates the whole." He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line.

-- From TheDevilsDictionary.com

Look It Up

...
....
..
_

Your name!
Your name!
Rah! Rah! Rah!

The Place of the Idiot: Where the Unbeliever Sits, or the Novice?

ton topon tou idiotou (Greek New Testament)

locum idiotae (Latin Vulgate)

the room of the unlearned (King James Version)

the place of the uninformed (New King James Version)

the position of an outsider (Revised Standard Version)

the place of the ungifted (New American Standard Bible)

the place of the unlearned (Authorized Standard Version)

1 Corinthians 14:16

Yo Mama!

La mamma degli imbecilli è sempre incinta.

From Where I Sit

Else when thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest?

If therefore the whole church be come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad?

1 Corinthians 14:16, 23

An Abecedary of Fools, Fops, Idiots and Sots

THE ALCHEMY OF "A"

For fools are stubborn in their way, As coins are harden'd by th' allay.

-- Hudibras

"B" BAWLS

When we are born, we cry, that we are come To this great stage of fools.

-- Shakespeare

A CHAMFER FOR "C"

Changelings and fools of heav'n, and thence shut out, Wildly we roam in discontent about.

-- Dryden

THE DEPTHS OF "D"

They damn themselves, nor will my muse descend  To clap with such who fools and knaves commend.

-- Dryden

THE EFFRONTERY OF "E"

I lose my patience, and I own it too, Where works are censur'd, not as bad, but new; While, if our elders break all reason's laws, Those fools demand not pardon, but applause.

-- Pope

THE FOPPERY OF "F"

Fools to popular praise aspire Of publick speeches, which worse fools admire; While, from both benches, with redoubled sounds, Th' applause of lords and commoners abounds.

-- Dryden

A GANDER AT "G"

Mighty dulness crown'd, shall take through Grub-street her triumphant round; And her Parnassus glancing o'er at once, Behold a hundred sons, and each a dunce.

-- Pope

A HA'PENNY FOR "H"

Half-wits are fleas, so little and so light, We scarce could know they live, but that they bite.

-- Dryden

IAMBS FOR "I"

On ev'ry thorn delightful wisdom grows, In ev'ry stream a sweet instruction flows; But some untaught o'erhear the whisp'ring rill, Inspite of sacred leisure, blockheads still.

-- Young

A JABOT OF "J"

From this last toil again what knowledge flows? Just as much, perhaps, as shows That all his predecessor's rules Were empty cant, all jargon of the schools.

-- Prior

A KNAR OF "K"

An honest man may take a knave's advice; But idiots only may be cozen'd twice.

-- Dryden

THE ILLUSIONS OF "L"

Strange coz'nage! none would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; And from the dregs of life think to receive What the first sprightly running could not give.

-- Dryden

MUGGED BY "M" I AM

I'm stopp'd by all the fools I meet, And catechis'd in ev'ry street.

-- Swift

"N" RAISES A DIN

Vain show and noise intoxicate the brain Begin with giddiness, and end in pain.

-- Young

"O" CASTS A SHADOW

But now these Epicures begin to smile, And say, my doctrine is more safe than true; And that I fondly do myself beguile, While these receiv'd opinions I ensue.

-- Davies

A PRODUCTION FROM "P"

Here gathering chroniclers, and by them stand Giddy fantastick poets of each land.

-- Donne

PIQUANT "Q"

What, are you dumb? Quick, with your answer, quick, Before my foot salutes you with a kick.

-- Dryden's Juvenal

THE RESTRAINT OF "R"

Rhyme is a crutch that lifts the weak along, Supports the feeble, but retards the strong.

-- Smith

"S" IS FOR SEED PLOT

The pestilent seminaries, according to their grossness or subtility, activity, or hebetude, cause more or less truculent plagues.

-- Harvey

"T" TELLS A TALE

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head, With his own tongue still edifies his ears, And always list'ning to himself appears.

-- Pope

OH UNQUALIFIED "U"!

How can the muse her aid impart, Unskill'd in all the terms of art? Or in harmonious numbers put The deal, the shuffle, and the cut?

-- Swift

AN INTERVENTION OF "V"

Sad accidents, and a state of affliction, is a school of virtue; it corrects levity, and interrupts the confidence of sinning.

-- Taylor

"W" MAKES A WASTREL

Young master next must rise to fill him wine, And starve himself to see the booby dine.

-- King

UNEXAMPLED "X"

Virtuous and vicious ev'ry man must be, Few in th' extreme, but all in the degree; The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise, And ev'n the best, by fits, what they despise.

-- Pope

"Y" PLAYS THE TYRANT

Love is your master, for he masters you: And he that is so yoked by a fool, Methinks, should not be chronicled for wise.

-- Shakespeare

"Z", IT SEEMS

We that acquaint ourselves with ev'ry zone, And pass the tropicks, and behold each pole; When we come home, are to ourselves unknown, And unacquainted still with our own soul.

-- Davies

Well Where Else Would You Expect Them To Fall?

The idiotic firm-grasp-of-the-obvious factoid of the day:

[A]ll grievers usually fall somewhere along a continuum between what Martin and Doka call “intuitive grieving” and “instrumental grieving.”

No kidding. Who would have thought? If they fell outside of the continuum, how would you know?

Seen here.

Who Needs REAL CLEAR RELIGION?

I can go weeks without reading it and not miss a thing, kind of like this blog.

Radical? You Can't Handle The Radical

 

 

And neither could they, which is why only a faint glimmer of the real man peeks out of the literary remains.

The New Testament is a box into which they stuffed the earnest Jewish boy who took himself a little too seriously and got himself killed. A nice neat little box where God can be kept and put safely on a shelf, where he no longer causes any embarrassment, or any trouble.

There are no authentic followers of Jesus today, just as there were none then.

Following, repentance, being a disciple, pick your favorite locution. They are all predicated on the imminent end of the world, without which there is no urgency:

to abandon customary human decency and let the dead bury the dead,

to subsume traditional family relationships under a wider set of mothers, sisters and brothers,

to say goodbye to everything that you own . . . without fanfare,

to risk making the members of your own household your enemies,

to preach so desperately quickly that Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.

Even in the Passion Narrative, which retools him from the later perspective of a sacrifice for sins, the inadequacy of his followers "following" is yet remembered: They fall asleep while he is sweating bullets. More remarkably, the memory of the faith of the fanatic remains unshaken: You will see the son of man, he told his judges at his trial, coming on the clouds of glory.

Has anyone seen those clouds? Is life really different now?

Jesus died a singularity, he whose mighty criticism of his own religion managed to outlive his failed prediction of the consummation of everything. The moral force of that prophetic career, stretching back to Isaiah and the living God of the patriarchs, lives on still and inspires people everywhere, some of whom however wrongly imagine that it is a virtue to take themselves as seriously as he took himself.

Well, go right ahead. It's a free country . . . for a little while longer.

But while you do, consider that your hero, Paul, thought that one man dying for the sins of the people was quite enough, thank you very much. Instead, Paul would tell all you idealists out there something you don't want to hear. He'd tell you to live quietly, mind your own business, and maybe pick the weeds and mow the grass. Maybe lots of grass, just to keep you out of trouble.

You'll understand when you're older, with a little luck, if you should live so long.

Choices, Not Inevitabilities

Fornication

Idolatry

Adultery

Effeminacy

Homosexuality

Thievery

Greed

Drunkenness

Badmouthing

Swindling

1 Corinthians 6:9f.

I Guess I Can Cross That Church Off My List

Between her marriage vows and the reception, a Michigan woman was arrested Saturday afternoon on a felony identity theft warrant and booked at the county jail while wearing her wedding dress and veil.

Tammy Lee Hinton, 50, was busted at the City of Zion Ministries church after the conclusion of her wedding.

Full story and mug shots here.

The New Israel

"For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. Peace and mercy be upon all who walk by this rule, upon the Israel of God."

-- Galatians 6:15 f.

I Got There Without Traveling: A Religion for Scanner Phobics

Without going outside, you may know the whole world.

Without looking through the window, you may see the ways of heaven.

The farther you go, the less you know.

Thus the sage knows without travelling;

He sees without looking;

He works without doing.

-- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 47

Without going out of my door

I can know all things on earth

Without looking out of my window

I could know the ways of heaven

The farther one travels

The less one knows

The less one really knows

Without going out of your door

You can know all things on earth

Without looking out of your window

You can know the ways of heaven

The farther one travels

The less one knows

The less one really knows

Arrive without traveling

See all without looking

Do all without doing

-- George Harrison, The Inner Light, 1968

'Down in the River to Pray'

As I went down in the river to pray

Studying about that good ol' way

And who shall wear the starry crown

Good Lord show me the way

O sisters let's go down

Let's go down, come on down

O sisters let's go down

Down in the river to pray

As I went down in the river to pray

Studying about that good ol' way

And who shall wear the robe and crown

Good Lord show me the way

O brothers let's go down

Let's go down, come on down

Come on brothers, let's go down

Down in the river to pray

As I went down in the river to pray

Studying about that good ol' way

And who shall wear the starry crown

Good Lord show me the way

O fathers let's go down

Let's go down, come on down

O fathers let's go down

Down in the river to pray

As I went down in the river to pray

Studying about that good ol' way

And who shall wear the robe and crown

Good Lord show me the way

O mothers let's go down

Come on down, don't you wanna go down?

Come on mothers, let's go down

Down in the river to pray

As I went down in the river to pray

Studying about that good ol' way

And who shall wear the starry crown

Good Lord show me the way

O sinners, let's go down

Let's go down, come on down

O sinners, let's go down

Down in the river to pray

As I went down in the river to pray

Studying about that good ol' way

And who shall wear the robe and crown

Good Lord show me the way

-- From an old slave song, popularized by Alison Krauss 

Jesus, or Megan McArdle?

Jesus (Matthew 6:25):

"Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?"

Megan McArdle (here):

"Human capital is like almost any other form of capital: it is a depreciating asset."

Reason 4,108 To Avoid A Church Today

 

 

 

Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprized to find it done at all.

-- Samuel Johnson, Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1791

Another Voice Warning About Our Dangerous Atheocracy

From James D. Conley, Auxiliary Bishop of Denver:

Denying the divine origins of the human person, our government has withdrawn the law’s protection from unborn children in the womb—the most absolutely innocent and defenseless members of our human family.

The legal extermination of the unborn is only the most egregious offense against God’s law. In fact, there is apparently no area of life over which our atheocratic government does not feel omni-competent—that government knows best. 

This is dramatically clear in the movement to establish homosexual unions as an alternative kind of family. Under pressure from powerful special interests who manipulate the language of “rights” and “freedom” in ways that contradict “the laws of Nature’s God,” our atheocratic government now deems itself competent to rewrite the God-given definitions of marriage and the family.

Read the entire article here.

New York 'Conservatives' Help Pass Gay Marriage

From The UK Daily Mail here:

The Catholic Bishops of New York said the [new] law alters 'radically and forever humanity's historic understanding of marriage'.

'We always treat our homosexual brothers and sisters with respect, dignity and love,' the bishops said Friday.

That's the problem, isn't it? The West has become soft, effeminate, and maleable because of a distorted reductionism of its message to 'love.'

What's next? Respect, dignity and love for the practitioners of idolatry and witchcraft?

Why any self-respecting man would go to such a church is beyond me. That, of course, assumes there are any left.

The Tithers: Today's Version of the Circumcision Party

Against those Jews who required circumcision of the Galatian Christians, Paul was quite adamant in his letter:

For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law (5:3).

I would they were even cut off which trouble you (5:12).

Against those who would shame the faithful to pay the bills, or oblige contributions as evidence of faith, Paul would have none of it:

. . .  not out of sorrow or out of necessity . . . (2Cor.9:7).

Owe nothing to anyone . . . (Romans 13:8).

For all you folks out there in Literalville, that's : Nothing, nada, zip; to none, nobody, no one.

Think about it.

The Four Fags of the Poxeclipse

On the Sacrosanctity of Judea and Samaria

For some, you mess with Israel's right to Judea and Samaria at your peril:

"Ehud Barak . . . touted as 'Mr. Security,' proceeded to withdraw unilaterally from South Lebanon, creating a vacuum soon filled by Hezbollah, and then worked with Bill Clinton to prepare a complete withdrawal from virtually all of Judea and Samaria. Miraculously, Arafat turned him down, started an Intifada, and Barak lost the government to Ariel Sharon in a landslide. Sharon unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, creating a vacuum soon filled by Hamas, and then turned his attention “kadimah” (eastward) to withdrawing from Judea and Samaria. And suddenly, just in the blink of an eye, he sustained a stroke that has left him in a coma for years."

-- Rabbi Dov Fischer

And that's just for starters. Read the rest here.

A Computer Scientist Stumbles into the Truth about the Rapture

Here.

Funny how a little Socratic elenchus can do that, eh, Mr. Dickerson?

Which is one reason why Socrates is viewed by some as a pre-Christian saint.

A Fine Turn of Phrase from a Lowlife

Seen here, emphasis added:

I’m a susceptible chap, happy to see the other person’s point of view more clearly than I see my own. And the Cross doesn’t offend me, either, as it seems to do so many. I was disposed to give the guy a hearing, even a debate. Unfortunately, he was an idiot. He thought God’s mind and his were alike, except God’s was slightly more daring and versatile. And now here he was, on this train, trying to interest everybody in this absurd projection of his imagination.

The Answer: It Becomes Christianity

The question: "What happens to a doomsday cult when the world doesn't end?" Asked by Vaughan Bell, here, but not of the Christian faith itself.

Live Blogging the End of the World

Here for AOL. Here for the "rolling Apocalypse" by time zone, from Australia. Raw Story here. Lefty here.

People have nothing better to do, I guess.

Jesus didn't teach a rapture of the just

Jesus Didn't Teach a 'Rapture' of the Just

Jesus simply taught an imminent end of the world and final judgment, at which time the Son of Man (himself) would appear in the heavens with the clouds of glory and with the holy angels, who would separate the wicked from the just, cleansing God's kingdom, the world, from all evil, casting the wicked into eternal fire, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Jesus called for removing all evil from the world as a matter of first importance, then gathering the righteous together after that.

This is the plain meaning of the parable of the tares and of the wheat, which must grow up together until the end in order to preserve the just alive. We are told that the angels first bundle up the tares, and throw them into the flames. Otherwise their presence would complicate what comes next. The wheat left behind must be winnowed with a fork, and its kernel separated and gathered with the rest into God's barn.

This is also the plain meaning of Jesus' analogy to the days of Noah, when the earth was cleansed of evil by water. So of the two workers in the field and of the two women at the mill, the one removed in each instance is the wicked one, not the righteous one. They are gathered by the angels, yes even caught up in the air perhaps, and consigned immediately to the flames.

This is the plain meaning of Matthew 13, and even of Matthew 24 which is a later attempt to rationalize the teaching of Jesus from the point of view of the failure of his prediction of the end of the world during his lifetime. The evidence is conveniently assembled for you here.

 

It is the also the plain teaching of the Old Testament.

 

The earth is the LORD'S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.

 

-- Psalm 24:1

 

The righteous shall never be removed: but the wicked shall not inhabit the earth.

 

-- Proverbs 10:30  

Larry Norman in the early 1970s is an example of one who popularized (in his music-"the Son has come and you've been left behind") the misconception that the just would be "raptured" from the earth, leaving the damned behind to suffer the end of the world.

In truth, the idea goes back to J.N. Darby in the early 19th century, and before him into the 18th, in keeping with all the other bad ideas of modernity. We seem to get things exactly backwards.

So if you're still here at 7 PM tomorrow night, count it all joy my brethren! Old men dream dreams. It's just that they might not know what they mean. 

The Rapture of the Unjust

But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat [in his field], and went his way. ... Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

 

-- Matthew 13:25, 30

The tares are the children of the wicked one; The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

 

-- Matthew 13:38ff.

So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

 

-- Matthew 13:49f.

And [they] knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

 

-- Matthew 24:39ff.

 

I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

 

-- Luke 17:34ff.

The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him and in an hour that he is not aware of, And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

 

-- Matthew 24: 50f.

What's the Weather Forecast for the End of the World this Saturday?

Fire, or ice? Desire, or hate?

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great,

And would suffice.

-- Robert Frost, 1920

Or perhaps just spring-like?

Critics point out that this isn't the first time Mr [Harold] Camping has predicted the second coming. On 6 September 1994, hundreds of his listeners gathered at an auditorium in Alameda looking forward to Christ's return.


"At that time there was a lot of the Bible I had not really researched very carefully," he said last week. "But now, we've had the chance to do just an enormous amount of additional study and God has given us outstanding proofs that it really is going to happen."

The Origin of the Religious Right is in the Great Revolt

As explained here:

Forty-five years ago, one in every six Americans belonged to the “seven sister” mainline Protestant denominations. Today, only one in 15 Americans still does. Although secular elites often portray a secularizing America, actual church attendance in America has remained remarkably constant across the last 75 years. But among non-Catholic Christians, attendance has shifted from mainline Protestant to more evangelical churches.

Your Pastor Could Be a Fudgepacker if . . .

. . . "he" is from the Presbyterian Church USA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Church of Christ, or the Episcopal Church.

Of course, she could be a rugmuncher, on the other hand.

The PCUSA voted Tuesday to allow gay ordinations, according to the story (here) from Reuters, which states that in the last five years about only 100 congregations have separated from the 11,000 strong denomination over the issue.

The only upside is it's getting easier and easier to eliminate the choices from the Sunday menu.

"Getting saved" is quickly being re-defined as escaping from liberal Protestantism.

Dissing the Mother: Jesus' Attempt to Redefine the Family

The sermon this day (Immanuel, 2 Michigan Street NE, Grand Rapids) was only loosely based on Mark 3:30-35, for to follow it honestly and strictly, one would have had to come to a far different conclusion than that Jesus intended to bless some conception of the traditional family, by which he supposedly encouraged people to marry and have children for an indefinite future as part of God's plan for the human race from the foundation of the world.

On the contrary, Jesus' teaching that his real brother, sister and mother is "whosoever shall do the will of God" is posited over and against the news announced in the pericope that "thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee."

"They're not my real family," he might have said in so many words.

No wonder people close to him, and perhaps members of his own family, said, "He is beside himself" (Mark 3: 21). That opinion was much debated among "the Jews" according to John 10, some of whom contended that possession by a demon had driven him mad (vs. 20).

Well, why not? Jesus' outrageous message of repentance meant repudiating one's entire life as it existed at the time of the call, to the extent that the most basic societal obligations had to go. "Let the dead bury their own dead." "Say goodbye to everything you have." "Come, follow me." Only a madman would ask you to quit your job, stop supporting your family, not "be there" for your sons and daughters, and follow some cult leader around the country.

It is remarkable that the evidence for this world-renouncing ethic yet remains buried in the stuff of the gospels when you consider how much the eschatological worldview which presupposes it has been scrubbed and re-interpreted in the interests of the Pauline gospel of salvation based on Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. But its ugly head pops up all over the place, ever to be massaged and explained away in this church and that, or simply avoided, while attempting otherwise to make the Bible relevant to the people in the pew, and to maintain the status quo.

But however that may be, it does seem ever less relevant. The desperation of the circumstances of the denomination of church I visited this day was plain enough. The average age in the denomination is now 67, we were told. 67! This church is not only not making converts among the young, it long ago failed to reproduce itself in sufficient quantities by adhering to the conception of "the traditional family." Such children as they have had have not stayed, or have not been large enough in number to affect this perilous signpost of coming extinction. 

It's as if these people have somehow taken Jesus all too seriously after all, even though they have not.

Crazy indeed.

The Reminiscences of the Nearness of the End Overlooked by the Redactor(s) of Mark

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel (Mark 1:15).

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 8:38).

Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power (Mark 9:1).

And Jesus said [to the high priest], I am [the Christ, the Son of the Blessed]: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven (Mark 14:62).

The Financial Crisis is a Manifestation of Widespread Moral Decline

"[A]fter a career in finance I look aghast on what has happened since the turn of the 21st century. The conclusion I have come to is that the present financial crisis was caused by, and is one of the most blatant manifestations of, widespread moral decline in our society."

-- George C. Karlweis, Geneva banker to George Soros, speaking safely in retirement, here

In the Pox-Eclipse . . .

. . . a piece of bread . . .

. . . could buy a bag of gold.

A Brief Catechism of the Copula

In which no questions are posed, and no answers required of thee:

Ye are the salt of the earth (Mt. 5:13);

Heaven is God's throne (Mt. 5:34);

Earth is His footstool (Mt. 5:35);

Wide is the gate that leadeth to destruction (Mt. 7:13);

Narrow is the gate which leadeth unto life (Mt. 7:14);

John is Elias (Mt. 11:14);

Whoever shall do the will of my Father is my brother and sister and mother (Mt. 12:50);

The tares are the children of the wicked one (Mt. 13:38);

This (bread) is my body (Mt. 26:26);

This (cup) is my blood (Mt. 26:28);

My meat is to do the will of him that sent me (John 4:34);

John was a burning and a shining light (John 5:35);

For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven (John 6:33);

I am the bread of life (John 6:35);

The bread that I will give is my flesh (John 6:51);

My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed (John 6:55);

The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life (John 6:63);

One of you is a devil (John 6:70);

I am the light of the world (John 8:12);

I am the door of the sheep (John 10:7);

I am the true vine (John 15:1);

Ye are the branches (John 15:5);

Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia (Gal. 4:25);

The church is his body (Eph. 1:22-23).

Now reach up with both hands and touch your ears, and feel that they are the long furry ears of an ass. 

Uh Oh. Lady Gaga Really is Nuts.

"I feel like honestly that God sent me those lyrics and that melody. When you feel a message to give to the world and people are shooting arrows at it... there's no way for something that pure to be wrong."

-- Lady Gaga, quoted here

Augustine: In Favor of the Death Penalty, and of the Just War

"The same divine authority that forbids the killing of a human being establishes certain exceptions, as when God authorizes killing by a general law or when He gives an explicit commission to an individual for a limited time.

"The agent who executes the killing does not commit homicide; he is an instrument as is the sword with which he cuts. Therefore, it is in no way contrary to the commandment, 'Thou shalt not kill' to wage war at God's bidding, or for the representatives of public authority to put criminals to death, according to the law, that is, the will of the most just reason."

-- The City of God, Book 1, chapter 21

Thomas Aquinas: In Favor of the Death Penalty

"Every part is directed to the whole, as imperfect to perfect, wherefore every part exists naturally for the sake of the whole. For this reason we see that if the health of the whole human body demands the excision of a member, because it became putrid or infectious to the other members, it would be both praiseworthy and healthful to have it cut away. Now every individual person is related to the entire society as a part to the whole. Therefore if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and healthful that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good, since "a little leaven corrupteth the whole lump” (1 Cor. 5:6)."

-- Summa Theologiae, II, II, q. 64, art. 2

Glenn Beck: The Growing List Alleging Plagiarism

Or "content theft." Or "use without proper attribution."

Namely:

Breitbart, Rebel Pundit, Media Research Center, Christian Hartsock, Liberty Chick, Verum Serum, Atlas Shrugs, Jihad Watch, Accuracy in Media, Associated Content, Founding Bloggers, Citizen's Radio and Michael Opelka.

The DC has the story here. 

IMHO the MO is thoroughly consistent with Beck's religion: The Book of Mormon is nothing but a cheap rip-off of the Christian Bible, after all. And the chutzpah! They want to be considered "Christians."

So what else would you expect of one of its followers?

The Eternal Flame

In Mark there's a fire asbestos

Not fleeting, as if just to test us:

Where their worm is eternal

And their flame, unquenchable.

Repeated three times! Imbecillus!

 

-- Johnny 

The Dark Side of English at Religion Dispatches

Will the harassment never stop?

(source)

With Rob Bell . . . in Hell

There once was a pastor named Bell

His first sermon, chronicl'd in hell:

"Jesus' radical love is a scandal!

That's why I took off my sandals!"

Twofold more child of hell than yourselves.

Story here.

The Proofer is a Protestant

Naturally:

"I believe in God. I am Christian. I think The Bible is certainly, it is THE book. It is the thing. ... First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica queens is where I went to church. I'm a protestant, I'm a Presbyterian. And you know I've had a good relationship with the church over the years. I think religion is a wonderful thing. I think my religion is a wonderful religion."

-- Donald Trump, interviewed here

Tithing: 58 Percent of Evangelical Leaders Say It's Not Required

"42% of evangelical leaders believe the Bible requires tithing, while 58% do not."


Find the complete story here.

Woe Unto You, Pastors! Hypocrites!

All their works they do for to be seen of men:

they make broad their diplomas on their walls, adorned in oak and glass, which they do use to command a higher salary but prove every Sunday from the pulpit, that they are worthless;

and they seek ever to enlarge the size of their ride, which they do wash and polish until gleaming but inside is full of dead men's bones;

and love the choicest spots reserved for them in the parking lot;

and to be visited by the sheep which was lost, in a large private office in the church, during office hours only;

and greetings in the restaurants, and the country club, and at the boat dock;

and to be called of men, Reverend, Doctor.

Woe unto you, pastors, hypocrites! for ye extort the tithe and devour women's houses, and for a pretence make long prayer for the poor, and the sick, the unemployed and the homeless: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.

Woe unto you, pastors, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one convert, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves, while the beggar on thine own street do ye refuse and turn away, and teach men so to do.

Woe unto you, pastors, hypocrites! for ye build excess square footage at great expense, which lies vacant and warm most of the day, and mistake its desolation for the kingdom of God. You have your reward.

Woe unto you, pastors, hypocrites! for ye bind on men heavy mortgages, grievous to be borne, and then do run away to take another call.

Woe unto you, pastors, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men.    

Little Danny Tutwiler

Little Danny Tutwiler

Sat upon a Rottweiler

And he began to cry:

"Maaaama! Maaaama!

Reverend Dr. Dan am I!"

"We don't even know how life got started on Earth"

So says the newest winner of what used to be called "The Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion," Cambridge cosmologist Martin Rees, here.

And not only that:

RCR: You are often presented in the press as a respecter of the gods but not a believer in them.

Rees: I think that's true. I don't have any religious beliefs but I'm not allergic to religion. I participate in the religious services of the Church of England, which is the culture in which I grew up. I'm an analogue to the substantial fraction of Jews who don't believe in God but still practice some of the traditional rituals. The liturgy and music of the English Church are part of my culture that I value and would like to see preserved.



Averse alike to flatter, or offend,
Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.

-- Alexander Pope

 

 

People Are Swine

"For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests."

-- David Mamet, 2008, here

Counterrevolutionary Acts: First We Kill All The Televisions

"Television certainly worked a revolution. But does anyone still maintain that the boob-tube has improved the minds of the young? Certainly, television opened the way for an even fuller Information Revolution. The apologists for television used to tell us that their darling has moulded the minds of 'the best informed generation in the history of America.' Also, it has moulded the minds of the most ignorant generation in America . . .."

-- Russell Kirk, 1983, here

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Somewhere, you wrote about the mass media, including the computer industry, conspiring to pervert our need for community. That the dream of having all this information at our fingertips to make us godlike is really doing the opposite and making us forget our humanity. Could you elaborate on that?

"It's not really that they're conspiring to, but they might as well be. If you sit down in front of the television with 700 channels, there's probably something on those channels that's going to interest you. It's a very good way to get stupid very quickly."

There's nothing you get from television? The information is just a delusion?

"I absolutely think so. If there's any information, it's purely accidental. Furthermore, I don't think there is any information to be gotten from television. I think it's an illusion. It's an interesting narcotic."

Even documentaries or historical programs?

"No, it's television."

What about the Internet and the promise of all this information becoming available?

"I don't know anything about it, but I'm sure it's worse."

-- David Mamet, interviewed, 1997, here

Let Us Now Shun Famous Men, Like David Bentley Hart

Without fear of contradiction I can assert that the group most detested by all and sundry at this hour in America is the Westboro Baptists, who have the unmitigated gall to show up at military funerals and proclaim God's hate, hate!, for America, her soldiers and her symbols.

"Her" is said advisedly, because to the Westboro Baptists, America is a bitch, a whore, ancient Babylon re-incarnate, for her late friendship with homosexuality, among other things.

Closely following them in opprobrium is the US Supreme Court which has rather thumpingly ruled that these fanatics have a right to express their opinions as they do, which has been according to the law. As far as the Supremes would have it, the quarrel is local, the politics local, and the local laws the law until such time as the locals change it and the Westboro Baptists break it.

A writer for First Things, one David Bentley Hart, is quite beside himself over all this. Here he calls the Westboro Baptists barbarians, fiends, resorters to absolute license, and abusers, with Mr. Hart fancying that the founders would have had them duly arrested. Actually, the founders would have criticized the Westboro Baptists for their timid response to the moral outrage of homosexuality, the practitioners of which the founders would have characterized as the barbarians, the fiends, the abusers and licentious in the extreme. The rest of us they wouldn't recognize as countrymen.

The truth is Mr. Hart actually would have preferred a fascism of the judicial sort, while crying out the generic variety, saving him all this trouble.

True to the readership of First Things, Mr. Hart has taken it a bit in the shorts not for any of that, but for suggesting, facetiously enough, that the Westboro Baptists and the military families might usefully settle this by a duel, which should tell you two things.

One, many readers of First Things apparently live where Rush Limbaugh lives, in not liberally educated Literalville, in a different neighborhood from Rush but still the same town, which comes as quite as much a shock to me as it does to Mr. Hart.

Two, Mr. Hart is sufficiently unnerved by this that he has found it necessary to write a follow-up (here) in which he has proposed instead that we all quickly recover the manners of a bygone age and treat these Westboro Baptists to the cut instead of the duel, a refined social custom descended from the shunning teaching of, for example, Paul's First Corinthian Epistle, chapter the fifth.

Oh yeah, that'll hurt 'em.

Except that in First Corinthians, Paul advises shunning actually the sinners, like the homosexuals, whereas Mr. Hart advises shunning, well, the shunners, Paul, and the Westboro Baptists, for example.

If there is a God in heaven, the Westboro Baptists are surely His prophets, and Mr. Hart is one of their targets. I'd say they're scoring hits.  

God Hates Your Fags, Flags, Uniforms, and Corpses

"These are desperate times, calling for desperate measures and we are going to get these words into your ears," she said. By focusing on military funerals, the leaders of Westboro Baptist "know that we are hitting three of your biggest idols -- the flag, the uniform and the dead bodies. ...

"We are going to finish this work. The Lord God Jehovah has our back."

-- Quotations of Margie "Amytis" Phelps, here

James Q. Wilson: Testosterone Minus Self Restraint Equaled Crime

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. for The Wall Street Journal has the interview, here:

We know that, in good times and bad, and in all countries, the majority of crime is committed by a small minority of young men. A landmark study by Marvin Wolfgang, for instance, showed that 6% of 18-year-olds were responsible for 52% of the crime committed by the cohort.

In the 1960s, the baby boom obviously enlarged the number of male teenagers, but what also changed conspicuously was the type of crimes they committed, from petty theft and the like to more serious crimes, such as armed robbery, grand larceny and homicide.

"So there was cultural change as well as a numerical change, and what caused the culture change? Whatever it was, it was powerful. I think it's best summarized by saying people abandoned the idea that self-control was the standard by which life should be led. That's my rough summary of what the '60s meant. . . .."

It all seems so obvious now, but so elusive when we were living it.

Born to Die

"However, in early democracies, as in the American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were -- State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistically selfish aspect of Western approach and thinking has reached its final dimension and the world wound up in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the 20th century's moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the 19th Century. ...

"If humanism were right in declaring that man is born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism."

-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn at Harvard, 1978, full speech here

In the Name of the Infantilis, the Jejunus, and the Holy Puerilis

The otiose David Warren dissects our Atheocracy here. The best thing about it is that it can't last too long, because it won't reproduce itself, and is defenseless. The point of having a "quiver" full of sons, after all, is to have your own army to defend the gate. Happiness is both that easy, and that hard:

[W]e have an upside-down religion, in which there is no God, but that "Not God" commands an obedience more absolute than God ever required, stipulating everything from the sanctity of antinomian sexual behaviour, down to how we should sort our garbage.

It rides upon an inexhaustible series of mildly fluctuating, but invariably self-contradictory moral and epistemological premises (or more precisely, conceits); and because everything is "relative," nothing may be challenged. It is ... a religion for which an extremely arid Darwinist materialism provides the founding cosmological myth. And abortion is its principal sacrament.

Or to put it another way, a religion that is not going to last forever, but has nevertheless been growing at an accelerating pace for more than 200 years. Moreover, a religion not without some real appeal, to a society of nearly pure consumers. ...

I once commissioned an essay from the estimable Eric McLuhan, expounding the philosophy of Peter Pan. It was a subject I even began drafting a book upon, myself: about the ease with which people may be ruled, once the faith of Peter Pan has been accepted. According to that faith, those who age will die. The secret of immortality is thus to remain perpetually a child, wishing perpetually upon a star. It requires some Nanny, to fulfil all the wishes.

Hence, our theocracy.

Children, we, of a lesser god.

Roman Catholic Calls For Reformation

Of Islam. 

Laura Ingraham, on today's radio show.

Oh yeah, that'll convince them.

Reason 4,107 Not To Be A Roman Catholic

Reported here:

The U.S. Catholic bishops on Thursday (Feb. 24) threw their moral weight behind the pro-union protesters in Wisconsin, saying the rights of workers do not abate in difficult economic times.

Yeah, and my right not to have my pocket picked NEVER abates, but especially in difficult economic times. 

 

Be content with your wages.   

-- Luke 3:14

Cowboy Decalogue

(1) Just one God.

(2) Put nothin’ before God.

(3) Watch yer mouth.

(4) Git yourself to Sunday meeting.

(5) Honor yer Ma & Pa.

(6) No killin’.

(7) No foolin’ around with another fellow’s gal.

(8) Don’t take what ain’t yers.

(9) No telling tales or gossipin’.

(10) Don’t be han kerin’ for yer buddy’s stuff.

Seen here.

The Paulinists' View of National Porn Sunday

I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a Protestant church and heard during the Sunday morning service a preacher or other person bring up sexual sin in pretty graphic terms and I never felt all that uncomfortable with it . . . until I became a father and had my child sitting next to me.

With the massive pornification of our culture stampeding through every corner of our lives, it is devastatingly disheartening that Sunday mornings have become ground where angels must now fear to tread. It's as if the church has become my enemy in trying to preserve my child's childhood, let alone innocence. There is a time and a place for this stuff, as a parent I'll be the judge of it, and Sunday morning worship isn't the place, especially with your eleven year old in tow.

Which is why today, with hundreds of churches participating in National Porn Sunday, we're not going to church. Again.

"For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret."

-- Ephesians 5:12

Oh yeah. We're not watching the big game, either.