Tag: religion

Guest Contributor – pigpen51 – 16JAN2023 – Reply to What’s Wrong With Modern Churches

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Here’s a Post About What’s Wrong with Modern Churches

I never knew that Bear Grylls was a man of faith. But it seems like he is not only a man of faith, but a wise man, as well. Myself, I have seen this same thing, for a very long time.
I attended Bible College in the early 1980’s, thinking that I might become a Baptist Pastor. Due to family circumstances, I was only able to attend for a year, but I learned much in that year. Not only knowledge about the Bible, but about Christians and the direction of the Church itself.
I could see even back then that there was a movement, not hidden, to try and move the conservative churches to become more liberal, and to turn to what I call a Social Gospel, instead of the Gospel of Truth. They were teaching Pastoral Candidates to question everything, to seek new and different interpretations of the Bible. To not believe the men like Spurgeon or Tozer, but to question them and to seek to find the places where they were wrong.
I always felt like a Church was supposed to be more of a hospital, for wounded Christians, than a Museum where so called ” Good Christians” came every Sunday to show how spiritual they are. And to listen to their pastors preach smooth words that put them at ease, words of comfort that they were just fine, and God loved them.
Well, God does indeed love them, especially if they are believers. Their sins are forgiven, but that doesn’t mean that they are walking in the light.
I found myself saved at an early age, perhaps 9 or 10. But I never knew that there was anything else required of me. Fortunately there was a real change in my heart and my life, and it was apparent that I had something different in my life. And it stayed with me all of my life. But at the age of 20, God showed me that there was more expected of me. I was in a serious car accident where it was like He shook me and said ” wake up, it is time for you to get to work.” So I got involved in the Church, and it was obvious that I was a Bible scholar, in that I understood how it was meant to be understood, and was able to see it as a whole, when so many failed to “get it.”
The problem I found was that Baptists failed to understand a lot of the things that I found in the Bible. Oh, they would acknowledge them, but then make excuses that didn’t hold water. Things about church discipline, and how salvation is by faith alone, but they then live like it is by works. To the place where a Baptist Pastor I knew would not leave a bottle of coke on his kitchen table, in case someone drove by and saw it and thought it was a beer bottle, and it made them stumble.
But I guess the biggest thing that drove me away from the Baptist church, but really it could have been just about any of the denominations of today, was their lack of genuine love for each other. They of course, made a big show of love, saying the right words, and telling each other that they will pray for them. But as you no doubt have seen, Christians are the only group that shoots their wounded. And if that wounded Christian is wounded so that the public is aware of it, all the better. One of those issues that I am thinking of is a young lady getting pregnant out of wedlock. Following the scriptures, it should be handled privately, and not be brought before the church, if the young lady understands that she made a mistake, and repents of it. The Baptist church, however, requires that lady to stand before the entire congregation and confess her sin.
Looking at Mary, the mother of Jesus, and how she came to be pregnant, and then Joseph who was called a just man, and not wanting to make Mary a public spectacle, but wanting to put her away privately, it seems like the whole public confession is totally against the teaching of the New Testament, and punitive at that.
I don’t see how a young lady, of 16-19 years old, pregnant out of wedlock, can feel loved if forced to stand before the entire congregation and confess her sin. It is a wonder that they don’t require her to wear the letter A on her clothing. This at a time when a young woman needs love and support from older women and families the most, they withdraw it.
Now we see churches trying to change, and to make the social gospel the big thing. Big production values, with rock bands and power point presentations, short films, etc. it is a wonder that they have any room for God in the building. And I think that is the feeling that young people get, and why they are seen to be leaving churches in droves. I hope that it turns around, but for that to happen, one thing will need to happen, and that is that God will have to be invited back into the building, and the church will need to begin it’s journey back into a hospital for the hurting, a refuge for the sick, and a shelter for those in a storm. I hope that it is not too late, because as the Church goes, so goes the nation.

To Paraphrase Huey Lewis and the News, “It’s Hip to be Unwoke.”

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According to the New York Times there is a troubling trend among some avant-garde kids to assume the trappings of traditional institutions, like the Catholic crucifix, and defy the virtue signaling mantra of their generation’s elite guardians.  So, the Times is looking for a sleuth to ferret out the details of this heresy and hopefully expose the malefactors so that they can be properly punished and then allowed to recant and declare their love for Big Brother.

This New York Times project is described in an article in the City Journal that goes on to try and explain these young rebels as the first fruits of a rebellion of the young against the dominant culture which in this case is the current all encompassing orthodoxy of woke-ism.  In other words, these young people are organizing a counter-culture against what used to be described as the Left’s counter-culture against western civilization.

The author states: “Few things are more natural for young people than to push back against the strictures and norms of their day, even if only to stand out a little from the crowd and assert their independence. A counterculture forms as a reaction against an official or dominant culture—and today, it is the woke neoliberal Left that occupies this position in America’s cultural, educational, technological, corporate, and bureaucratic power centers. In this culture, celebration of ritualized, old forms of transgression is not only permitted, but practically mandatory. Dissent against state-sponsored transgression, however, is now transgressive. All of what was once revolutionary is now a new orthodoxy, with conformity enforced by censorship, scientistic obscurantism, and eager witch-hunters (early-middle-aged, zealously dour, tight-lipped frown, NPR tote bag, rainbow “Coexist” bumper sticker, pronouns in email signature—we all know the uniform).”

Apparently, these young rebels can be found in trendy areas of lower Manhattan and their cachet as members of the avant-garde worries the gatekeepers of public morality at the Times and the author equates this worry with genuine peril that the youth among the elites could be corrupted and driven over to the dark side where one day they would produce a new consensus to shift the balance of power away from the monolithic progressive world view.  And a new regime could populate the Deep State with acolytes of the Dissident Right.

Well, I don’t know about that.  I know that Curtis Yarvin is interested in the lower Manhattan scene being discussed and he is of the opinion that the only way to neutralize the Deep State is to peacefully displace it with a new elite.  But in both of these examples I wonder at the circumstances and the time line that would bring about such a transformation.  Some kids in Manhattan adopting Christian symbology isn’t a bad thing but what is the larger significance?  Do these young people hope to change the values that guide modern life?  Are they looking to traditional values to give meaning to their existence?  And how many people are we talking about?  A handful, a few thousand or a growing trend?

And what will be the reaction of the gatekeepers?  I’m sure they’re already busy looking to siphon off any discontented teens with a Tik-Tok influencer who sports a trans-friendly pseudo-Catholic rosary that involves anti-Pope Francis’ official rainbow seal of approval.

I guess, on balance, any fear on the part of the official organs of the state like the Times is a good and promising symptom.  Therefore, I won’t rain on their parade.  But I think I’ll wait to celebrate until I see some larger more widespread evidence that the Zoomers have begun to rebel.  Possibly the “Let’s go Brandon” cheers (or their actual words) at football games could be interpreted as the first real sign of popular unrest of the young against the Left.  But I’ve assumed that was more of a reaction to the COVID lockdowns by the Biden administration and not a general anti-woke reaction.  We’ll need to see clearer signs such as voting trends or support for traditional institutions like religion and marriage.

But I’ll end by saying that anything that hints at the young abandoning the woke cult is encouraging.  Even if it’s a minority movement, it’s a start.

Supreme Court Rules Religious Schools Have the Same Right to State Money as Any Other Private School

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The Supreme Court Rulings are starting to roll out now.  And this is a big one.  Maine has a law that allows for districts that do not provide a high school for their children to use state money to reimburse parents for sending their children to private schools.  But it excluded religious schools.  The Supreme Court found that rule unconstitutional.  This is a very big deal.  This will open the floodgates for any anti-religious school laws to be thrown out.  And this is the foot in the door to allow parents to get their kids out of the public schools.  This isn’t the end of the fight but it’s the first shot being fired.  Good.

 

 

 

The Bells of St. Mary’s – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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This week is Thanksgiving and that means we’ve reached the Holiday season.  And going hand in hand with that is my annual holiday movie watching and reviewing ritual.  In years past I’ve especially concentrated on versions of “A Christmas Carol.”  And rightly so.  It is almost a transfiguration of the generosity of the Christmas holiday into a mythic experience.  There is an actual catharsis associated with experiencing Scrooge’s repentance and rebirth.  So, without a doubt I will have something new to say about Dicken’s classic again this year.

But let’s return to the task at hand.

Tonight, I watched again “The Bells of St. Mary’s.”  I’ve seen it many times before.  First off, it’s not actually a Christmas movie.  The movie begins in the Fall and ends in the late Spring.  There is indeed a scene or two associated with Christmas as it relates to the eponymous Catholic grammar school that is the focus of the film.  But it is incidental, not central to the plot.  Strictly speaking, there is no holiday theme to the movie at all.  What there is, is a representation of an American Roman Catholic parish grammar school from the middle of the twentieth century.  And when I say it is a representation and not an actual reflection, I can speak with all the assurance of thirteen years of Catholic school experience to back it up.  Without a doubt, the priests and nuns that I encountered in school and church bore not the faintest resemblance to the kind, patient, loving and wise religious figures that exist in the film.  Quite the contrary, I know without a doubt that some of the priests, brothers and nuns that I knew were truly evil and committed atrocities for which they can never be forgiven.  So, I have no illusions as to the reality of Catholic education and those administering it.

Also, this is a movie from 1945.  America was close to defeating the Axis powers in World War II when the movie was being made.  The populace was united and determined and looking forward to winning the war and returning to normal life including marriage and children.  Everything about the movie reflects a societal view that was carefully orchestrated by Hollywood and the Federal government to maintain morale for the civilians at home and the troops abroad.  Wholesome entertainment and Christian values were the coin of the realm.  And they were especially important around Christmas time.  So, what we see is the Hollywood idealization of Catholic grammar school life.

Put all that together and you have to conclude that this movie is a lie.  A deliberate fabrication.  Shouldn’t it be derided for deluding the public?  Maybe.  After all, if the Catholic Church has been enabling predatory pedophiles for decades maybe movies like the present one are part of the front that allowed this practice to exist.  That may be true.

But if you watch this movie you see a story about people working together to raise children not only by educating their minds but also by nurturing their spirits.  The pastor and the nuns spend the time to find out what problems the children are experiencing and giving them practical advice and help to overcome their problems and face the real world they will soon be joining.

The portrayals by Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman are extremely enjoyable.  Both of them radiate warmth, intelligence, humor and vitality.  Bergman especially shows us a sensitive woman enduring an extremely confusing and demoralizing reversal in her life.  Some of the other characters and circumstances have some predictable tropes and stereotypes painted on but these do not greatly distract us from the central plot lines and some are quaint in and of themselves.

Overall, I found this movie to be a beautiful story.  Whether it’s classified as a story, a fantasy or propaganda it is emotionally powerful and very enjoyable.  For the Christmas season it provides an idealized version of what the Christian religious community is supposed to be.  If only it truly were like the movie.

An Interview with Victor Orban

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Victor Orban is the Prime Minister of Hungary and a staunch Hungarian nationalist.  He is trying his best to push his country back in a direction that aligns with Family, God and Country.  And because of this he is despised by his EU neighbors.  The openly gay EU leaders have been triggered by his recent passing of a law that forbids proselytizing the LGBTQ lifestyles to minors.  But he is indifferent to their hysteria.  The fact that Hungary elected this man four times speaks volumes about their superiority to our own with respect to survival instinct

Recently he was interviewed by a religious publication from Croatia.  Here are some excepts.  Note:  This is a machine translation from a Croat publication and therefore not particularly polished.

 

How much does it cost you to swim against the dominant European political current?

Whoever swims with the multicultural fashion of this time loses everything that matters in life. True, everyone who goes against the current causes themselves a lot of problems. We pay a high price. Hungary pays a high price for not signing the Istanbul Convention, then refusing to support any Cold War policy; we pay a high price for not kicking the Russian president every day together with Westerners, but giving him the respect he deserves as president; we pay a high price for protecting the Christian model of the family; that LGBT madness has no place here; then we pay a high price for our position on migration and we pay a high price for not accepting the Brussels bureaucracy, but first and foremost as a counterweight to building Central European cooperation. So, we really pay a high price. But if we don’t pay that price, and if we don’t represent our interests, we may live more comfortably, but we will end up losing a lot more. We do better if we fight. I think Zrinski would understand that too.

 

How strong are the influences of pre-democratic structures in Hungary today?

In the Hungarian soul there is generally a desire for what is more important than personal life, which transcends it. Hungarians usually look for it in three directions: in the direction of family, nation and God. Usually, conversion also occurs when these three worlds are connected. It is a process that is progressing and I would not say that we are hindered by pre-democratic structures, no one else is responsible, it is our responsibility. Clearly, there are atheists in Hungary as well, there are opponents of the Church, there are liberals who do everything to stop the spread of Christian values. They have their own media, they are organized, they have strong civic associations. However, we have them on the conservative side as well – there are at least as many Christian media as there are anti-Christian ones, our civil associations are at least as strong as theirs, maybe even stronger; and we hold political positions because we have a Christian government. Therefore, the lack of spiritual renewal cannot be attributed to our opponents. The fault is not in others, but in ourselves.

 

You mention the soul of Europe, the spiritual struggle. Is the current political struggle actually the materialization of a spiritual struggle waged in the background?

Politics takes place on three levels simultaneously. The first level is practical: it deals with issues related to power, the acceptance of the budget, the appointment of persons, the maintenance of order. I would call the second level a vision, because all national communities must have a vision. What will happen to the Hungarians, not tomorrow morning, but in five, 10, 20 years? However, behind everything there is another broader dimension, the world of transcendence. We live in that dimension as well, and it is a part of life. In Hungarian political thought, this is called the problem of majority and truth. It could be said like this: if someone has a majority, but does not strive for the truth with that majority, what will the majority do for him? It’s just profanation. If, on the other hand, one advocates the truth but cannot move the majority, how will he act in the interest of that truth? It is a key challenge of Christian politics that emerges in democratic conditions. To simplify, we no longer have sacral kings anointed by God, so we must exist in a democracy, connecting the majority and the truth. It is not easy, but it is possible. Demo-Christian politics also has its mandate in relation to Christian culture. Christianity, first of all, created a free man. Therefore, we must first and foremost protect human dignity. Then, Christianity created a Christian family. We must protect the concept of the Christian family. Furthermore, Christianity has created nations in this part of the world. If we, the Hungarians, had not followed Christianity for a thousand years, we would have disappeared, so we must also protect the nation. But we must also protect religious communities and the Church. To summarize, our task is not to protect theological principles, it is the mission of the Church, but the great Christian achievements of civilization. And when I protect them, I fight not only with the sword, I use not only power, but also arguments.

My Definition of the Right

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We talk a lot about the Right and the Left and who is on the Right and who is on the Left.  For instance, a large part of the 2016 fireworks was over people who said Donald Trump was not a Republican.  And a large contingent of these people were neoconservatives and libertarians.  To them Trump was just an opportunist who had seized on nativist talking points to appeal to the worst instincts of the working-class White Americans and would lead the Republicans to disaster in the general election because his policy priorities would be rejected by the wider American electorate.  As it turned out they were dead wrong.  “Making America Great Again,” and putting America first resonated with the majority of voters.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since 2016 and the neocons have become the NeverTrumpers and have self-ejected from the Republican party and the Right in general.  They are now indistinguishable from Woke Leftists except in their enhanced emphasis on all things anti-Trump.

And this is the crux of the point of this post.  The Neocons were never conservatives.  And it should have been obvious from the beginning that if you are not socially conservative then you are not of the Right.  And that goes for others “on the Right.”  Being in favor of market capitalism makes you a capitalist.  It doesn’t make you a conservative.  You can be an enthusiastic capitalist and compete ferociously in the free market and still be in favor of deconstructing the United States of America, the Family and Western Civilization all at the same time.  So, the former dichotomy of Right and Left being capitalists versus communists doesn’t really apply to today.  The Woke Left is spearheaded by Silicon Valley billionaires who print money by the metric ton but want to turn America into a digital gulag.  So, defining the Right isn’t what we thought it was back in Reagan’s day and never was.  Somehow Donald Trump knew that the Right wasn’t the Right and he was able to seize the high ground and overturn the establishment Republican’s narrative.  He became the Right.  But Donald Trump will not always be around and we need a definition of what the Right is or represents so that we can measure other leaders and other policies to see if they align with our interests.

So, what is the Right, what is conservatism?  As far as I can tell, conservatism is the Right and what it means is conserving the things in life that have value, things that give life meaning.  And so, it comes down to individual judgement.  But I think if the “normal” opinion on what gives life meaning is assumed then what we are talking about are the rock-bottom requirements to making life human.  And I don’t think you can get any more fundamental than the preservation of the family.  A man and a woman raising kids is just about as basic as it gets.  All that needs to be added is the framework for raising them which we call religion.  So, God and Family.  And because this is America, we add in the Constitution of the United States to allow all the families to interact without having to kill each other.  In fact it’s probably one of the finer blueprints for running a country.  God, Family and Country.  That’s it.

For the most part what we have to do is see where a particular policy or leader aligns with or hampers these things and we’ll know whether it’s of the Right or not.  For instance, the Supreme Court has declared gay marriage a Constitutional right.  This makes it very difficult for a politician to do anything about eliminating it.  But if a politician says he’s a conservative and he also espouses gay marriage or transgender rights then you know that he’s a Leftist.

There, that’s easy.  Look at what politicians say they agree with and you’ll know what side they are on.  If a politician says he’s anti-communist but his idea of capitalism means sending all the jobs overseas and importing low wage laborers into this country then guess what?  He’s a Leftist.  He may claim he just believes in free markets and capitalism but what he really believes in is globalism and therefore he doesn’t believe in the United States of America.  If a politician says he believes in God but says that you aren’t allowed to object to sexual deviancy being taught to your children then guess what?  He’s a Leftist.

Now how easy is that?  Try it on any politician who waxes poetic about conservatism but never seems to get any results.  Find out what he’s actually said about specific policy points like illegal immigration or bringing jobs back to this country or tariffs or “free trade” or transgender rights or freedom of religion.  It should be pretty easy to sort the wolves from the sheep dogs.

I’ll try to put together some further examples to try to refine my thoughts on the definition of the Right and the various groups like libertarians and social conservatives and socialists but I hope this makes clear what I think conservative means.  It means pro-family, pro-religion, pro-America.  In other words pro-normal.

Some Thoughts on Religion, Organized and Otherwise

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Of late I have been looking into the current state of religion in our world and more specifically in my general vicinity.  I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church and received a relatively thorough indoctrination into its tenets through a 12-year course of primary and secondary Catholic education (boys only high school with religious brothers as faculty) along with multiple members of my family in the Catholic clergy (priest and nun).  In fact, my uncle was pretty high up in the administration of a Catholic order so I got to see a bit more of the nuts and bolts of Catholic clerical hierarchy than I cared to.

From all this I have come to the conclusion that the Catholic Church rarely has much to do with God.  First of all, making unmarried men the spiritual leaders of your community is completely insane.  Some young man who has never been married and will never have children is the last person I would go to for advice and spiritual guidance when my back is to the wall.  Secondly the idea of forced celibacy on young men is also an incredibly unstable arrangement.  I’m sure there is a subset of men for whom it can work.  The idea of abstaining from sex could allow for concentration on less worldly concerns but I suspect that some form of castration would be the only practical way to eliminate the hormonal influences on a man’s mind.  And the horrors of the pedophile history of Catholic priests is all the proof I need that it is a terrible idea.  From what I’ve read celibacy is more of a business decision that the church adopted as a way of preventing nepotism from infiltrating up the hierarchy of the Church.  Originally parish priests could marry.  Only the ambitious clerics who eventually wanted to climb the ladder to monsignor, bishop or higher remained celibate in order to be considered for this advancement.

Because of this restriction the Roman Catholic hierarchy has been conquered by homosexuals all the way up to the Vatican.  The grooming of young men in the seminaries is an abomination.  Any legitimacy it may have had as the primary vehicle of Christ’s Church on earth has been completely forfeited by the sins that its priests have committed against innocent children and by the failure of its leadership to uncover these crimes and hand the criminals over to the authorities for the heaviest sentences that can be handed down.

I have of late been interested in the Orthodox Catholic denominations and the Traditionalist Catholic.  The Greek and Russian and other churches have much in common with the Roman Church and would probably be relatively familiar to me.  The lack of a celibate clergy is to my mind a big advantage.  And the liturgy would be familiar.  I will have to do a good amount of research to understand whether any of the problems of the Roman Catholic Church exist to a greater or lesser extent in the Orthodox churches.

Not having attended services to any extent in any of the protestant denominations my knowledge of their practices is based on popular information.  One of the recent innovations in some of the denominations is female clergy.  Another recent innovation is acceptance of homosexuality in the ministry and finally the sanctification of homosexual marriage.  As you might guess I won’t be interested in any sect that stands for any of that.  In fact, I won’t even get involved in any church that starts editing gender neutral wording into its Bible.  I’ll stick to the most archaic wording I can get.  King James is plenty recent enough.  If necessary, I’ll go back to the original Greek.  I can read that just fine.

I went to an article on denominational differences and put together this list of “safe” choices.  I eliminated any denominations that ordain women or sanction homosexuality in any way shape or form.  Interestingly that even knocked out the Mormons, which surprised me.  These are the sects that were left.  Adventist, Southern Baptist Convention (stopped ordaining women in 2000), Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, United Pentecostal Church International, Orthodox Presbyterian Church.  Now of course I actually need to know more about the other aspects of their beliefs.  Then I’ll have to see what local congregations exist in my neck of the woods and do a meet and greet with the ministry and find out if I fit in.

And finally, if all of these choices fall through then I have seriously considered starting my own church.  After all what did Saint Peter, Martin Luther and John Knox have that I ain’t got?  I’m just as created in God’s image as any of them and I can definitely side step a whole bunch of pitfalls that they’ve stepped in along the way.  And I sure as hell won’t be introducing celibacy into my ministry.  In fact, I think that I would require anyone thinking of leading a church to be the father of grown children and I’d use the job that he did raising them as prima facie evidence of his ability to guide his flock.  And I’d also want to meet his wife.  If she is a feminist that would be big old stop sign in my evaluation of his judgement.  And finally, I’d find out if he voted for Donald Trump.  If he didn’t, I’d boot him out and slam the door behind him.

But seriously, religion is a personal relationship between man and God.  The Bible says that the way to pray to God is to lock yourself in an empty room and talk to Him directly.  No one needs a big shiny church or a guy in a black suit to help you.  But if you can live in a community of people who have the same beliefs as you that is an enormous advantage spiritually, psychologically and physically.  And that’s the reason for my search.  I’d like to find a community.  If I have to, I’ll build it myself.  And with the COVID lockdowns I already have a beard that would do any Old Testament patriarch proud.

First Dividend from Installing ACB on the SCOTUS

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In a 5-4 decision that saw John Roberts side with the Progs and newly appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett casting the deciding vote the Supreme Court overturned New York State’s onerous restrictions on religious gatherings.

https://archive.fo/xcOt8#selection-2345.139-2345.163

Let’s hope that Barrett’s presence on the bench will give courage to such unreliable votes as Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.  Who knows, maybe the Supreme Court will decide that allowing thugs to run wild in the street and allowing gangsters to steal a presidential election are just a tad Un-American.

 

 

 

 

 

Accentuating the Positive

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One of my favorite bad thinkers never tires of reminding his readers and listeners that a negative identity is not a strong position to be in.  In other words, if you define your identity by what you are against then you lack a basis for defining what you are for.  This is the charge he lays at the feet of Conservative Inc.  By defining themselves as only against progressivism they are constantly addressing whatever new outrage the Left cooks up but they fail to define what they themselves do stand for.  If you’re always on the defensive you never have a chance to advocate for the things you actually want to see implemented.

Far better is to look at what you do believe in and formulate it into a clear and coherent statement.  That way when someone asks your stance on this or that example or scenario you have a rational basis for your answer.  And also, it gives you a logical basis for formulating an agenda of actions for the future, a plan.  Now my identity is relatively innocuous since at heart I’m just a garden variety civic nationalist.  What I would want is a return to normal American society with plenty of allowance for individual differences in background and culture.  Plenty of room for normal people who want to raise their kids as good American citizens.

So, that all sounds reasonable but when you look at our present situation it becomes much more complicated.  For instance, the Boy Scouts of America was an organization with the specific mission of providing boys with a fraternal organization to help them become physically fit, mentally awake and morally straight.  And because of that mission it was hounded by homosexuals and feminists until now it isn’t for boys and soon, I’m sure they’ll have to remove the word straight for fear of offending the delicate.

My example is meant to show that trying to define a positive identity makes you a target for those who hate what you are.  They will see what you stand for and try to destroy it.  The same thing has been done to almost all other social organizations.  The US government has forced women into every fraternal organization with the sole exception of religious organizations.  And of course, many of these have surrendered too.  One of the only exceptions I know of is the Knights of Columbus which is a Roman Catholic fraternal organization which excludes women as anything but auxiliaries.

Well if that is the only exception then that will have to be the path forward.  It’ll have to be a religious fraternal society.  The organization must utilize the Freedom of Religion under the First Amendment to protect it from the invasive forces of the federal government and may need to restrict itself to states that do not regularly harass conservative organizations.  The mission of the organization can be loosely grounded in the usual fraternal agenda.  Service to the community, family activities and religious or ethical training are all things that fall under the purview of a religious fraternal organization.  The thing that has to be carefully defined is the religious requirements that define the organization such that you can avoid all the latest abnormal behavior.  Luckily the Christian Bible (at least the one used up until the 1950s) has scriptural authority for avoiding the whole LGBTQ agenda in one fell swoop.  The only thing I’m not sure of is whether it can be structured so that any member from one of the remaining traditionalist sects is eligible or whether a separate religion will need to be founded in order to give it legitimacy.  In other words, is it enough for me to be the Grand Exalted Master or do I also have to be the Pope?

All of this sounds crazy but maybe that is what this world actually requires to permit men the freedom to live their lives as they wish to.  When the churches themselves become corrupt and controlled by the insane maybe it’s not crazy to think that new churches need to be formed.  This sort of dovetails with my earlier talk about the He-Man Woman Hater’s Club.  But of course, as time goes on it becomes less of a joke and more of a necessity.  And if anyone knows of an existing fraternal organization that already covers all the bases, I’m interested in let me know and I’ll look into it.  Until then I’ll order Camera Girl to make me some sandwiches while I think up secret handshakes and build a mystic decoding ring.

Man and God – Part 1 – The Existence of God

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I want to preface this by saying that I have no formal training in theology, church doctrine or divinity other than twelve years of Roman Catholic schooling and the associated doctrinal education that entails.  Nothing I say can be construed to be orthodox doctrine within any sect of Christianity.  I’m sure that several of my beliefs would be considered heretical by some Christian theologists so don’t assume anything I say is dogma for any church you might belong to.  But it is what I believe and I think it’s time people start connecting the dots with what their scriptures say, what they understand it to mean and what the clerics in their churches say and do.

For all of recorded history and as far back as we can discover, man has tried to understand his place in the universe.  Earth Mother, Sky Father, elemental forces, spirits of animals, ancestors, natural objects like mountains, rivers, stars, planets, the sun and moon, all figured into the speculations and rituals of the humans who have inhabited Earth for countless generations.  Even our predecessors, the Neanderthals had burial customs that may have had a religious meaning.

But since the Age of Enlightenment the elite of our civilization has told us that God is dead.  But by that they mean that he never existed in the first place.  And within our lifetimes organized efforts have been put in place to stamp out belief in God.  The Soviets did everything they could to enforce atheism throughout the Soviet Union and the satellite nations that they controlled.  The modern academy inculcates a hatred of Christianity that borders on the monomaniacal.  And the LGBTQ mafia and their government allies confront and persecute any traces of orthodox Christianity wherever they can.

So, it is no wonder that church attendance is plummeting and surveys polling religious belief show a growing trend toward atheism among the young.  Sensing their ascendancy, the Left now asserts that religion and specifically Christianity has been discredited and will soon disappear, being completely displaced by the godless social justice cult that they adhere to.  And as if to prove their mastery of religion they now claim to be able to observe on brain scans the phenomenon which believers experience when communing with God in prayer.  From this scientific result they deduce that humans are confusing a natural neurological phenomenon with a supernatural experience.

This is the attack on the faithful from without.  At the same time, forces within the religious community are also wreaking havoc on the position of religion.  The monstrous horror that is the Catholic Priest Pedophile outrage has done more to discredit the Church than anything its enemies could have ever hoped to do.  I include in this of course the cover up of this horror by the complicit Church hierarchy which only serves to hammer home that the Roman Catholic Church has ceased to represent the traditional religious views of its hundreds of millions of adherents.  And the other Christian denominations to a greater or lesser extent have also lost much of their legitimacy through advocating almost exclusively a message of social justice and adopting a spirit of “tolerance” that effectively eliminates the tenets of their faiths.

I don’t paint a rosy picture.  And I don’t intend to.  Because I don’t have to.  Belief in God is not a delicate thing that has to be nurtured.  The need for God is one of the fundamental psychological needs of the human mind.  What has to be done is eliminate the mistaken information that confuses the minds of people.

As an example, the problem of pain.  Countless people have wrestled with the idea that somehow God could eliminate pain and suffering but chooses not to.  When confronted by the reality of innocent children suffering and dying from agonizing medical conditions or through brutal cruelty, they deny the reality of a loving God who would allow such things.

I have thought about this often myself.  The paradox is that of pure goodness and omnipotence juxtaposed with unjust suffering.  As an answer I’ve heard that free will prevents God from stopping evil men from inflicting pain on the innocent.  Of course, this doesn’t explain why natural disasters are allowed to occur.  So, we are stuck with a paradox.  But the answer is simpler.  How do we know the limits of what God can and can’t do?  If you read doctrine of the various churches, they state that God is omnipotent.  Well, what does that mean?  Human beings have no experience of any absolute.  We live in a world that we interpret with our senses and our very limited brain.  God may be so powerful that we cannot even fathom what he is capable of but that doesn’t mean he can control every drop of rain and every quake of the Earth.  It is my belief that the concept of omnipotence is the major stumbling block to belief in God.  Omnipotence sets up this idea of a game that’s rigged against us for no reason.  That is the problem that I think needs to be removed.

But what do we know about God?  What is clear from scripture is that God loves us.  That he says over and over again.

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

1 John 4:16

So, if God loves us, he does not want us to suffer.  If nevertheless we do suffer innocently then it’s because it can’t be prevented.  To me that’s clear.  Whether that means there is a malevolence like the devil or a cold lifeless random universe outside of God’s purview then that’s what there is.  But I don’t have to understand everything.  I just need to know that I’ve got someone out there who cares for me and mine.  And who has interceded to provide help and knowledge and maybe even tip the scales a little in our favor whenever he can.

To me that’s the nature of a personal God.  He is a father to us and we have some of His spirit in us too.  And that’s not all that different from feeling the influence of the parents and grandparents that raised us and taught us and gave us understanding when we needed it.  And that is like the ancestors who passed along the laws that we live by.  God’s spirit allowed them to see how his people must live and so they wrote down these laws and provided the leadership needed to teach the people how to live.

Today many people will say that all of this can occur without God existing, that a tribe will coalesce around a leader whose mind naturally resonates to the needs of his people and will formulate the laws they need to thrive.  I know no way to prove otherwise.  But that is unimportant to me.  I do not seek to convince anyone.  I believe that there is a force in this world that impels us to do good.  And what seems like a proof of its existence is that it works against the flow of the world, the flow of which, if it does not actually work to achieve evil at the very least is completely unaffected by the suffering of humanity.  Countless stories exist of individuals laying down their lives to save a stranger from harm.  This impulse is a direct contradiction of animal nature which except in the case of parental love would put self-preservation ahead of any other consideration.

God’s exact nature can only be inferred by His effect on those that experience Him.  But I think that where genuine communion is experienced the effect is remarkably positive on the individual involved and even for the surrounding community.

The problem we are experiencing today is the lack of actual Christians in the churches.  Many of the leaders of the churches are not Christians.  They do not actually believe in God and their congregants sense this and are confused and angered by the hypocrisy.  And for the young this is amplified by the atheists that they meet up with in school and elsewhere that ridicule faith and accuse it of bigotry.  These young people are under enormous pressure to denounce Christian morality in order to avoid condemnation by the LGBTQ gatekeepers in school and the workplace.

But the first step is to re-establish the existence of God.  That takes two things.  First, convince yourself that there is no logical reason that precludes His existence.  That I’ve tried to provide above.  Then find belief in God within yourself.  That you have to find yourself.  But it’s definitely something that should be explored.  As I stated earlier there is a strong urge in humans to find the force in the universe that resonates with our happiness.  If you find a quiet spot and look inside yourself you might be surprised what you find.  Start out by not calling it God.  Start out by looking inside yourself to see what’s there.  Then take it from there.