You formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

- from the second chapter of the letter to the budding church in Ephesus

 

I got guns in my head and they won't go / Spirits in my head and they won't go

- words from a popular and now quite common anthem of disaffection among millennials

The 2016 presidential election is just days away, this home page piece posted on October 29th with the election November 8th. Should a reader come across this at some time in the next couple months we'll already know who Americans have made president.

A brief article appeared in the New York Times yesterday revealing precisely what the powers-that-be want us to believe about who that should be. Timothy Egan made one last, final, desperate attempt to convince us that if you vote for Donald Trump you are a racist, sexist, xenophobic Klansman-type individual. It was all there, you can read it. Indeed it was nothing different than what the Times and all its subdivisions — the major television networks and journalistic organizations — have been told they're supposed to tell us for months and months now.

At the first presidential debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton, there was outside in the hall a placard informing attendees that counseling experts would share with them some encouragement should they be triggered — you know, forced to get unduly emotional if they felt offended in some way — you know, because Donald Trump is such a racist sexist greedy bastard he is very likely to offend you.

I thought, huh, what if I felt triggered by what Hillary says?

I wonder if the conversation might go something like this.

 

Me: I felt very offended by what Hillary Clinton said tonight. May I have some counseling?

Them: Umm, and what did she say?

Me: She called me a sexist.

Them: Ahem, um, how exactly did she do that?

Me: It is because I support what Donald Trump says he wants to do regarding the full protection of unborn children, and Clinton thinks that's being sexist.

Them: Well, it is really about protecting women's reproductive health rights, and if someone isn't for that — if he isn't for women in that regard — then that person is certainly a sexist.

Me: Excuse me, but calling me that makes me emotionally distraught, and you didn't give me a trigger warning. How are you expected to counsel me against the very thing you are doing to me?

Them: I'm confused.

 

I'd venture to say if the "counselor" is honest in sharing what he or she truly believes, the exchange would probably not be much different than this. The point is all the talk of protecting people with trigger warnings and safe zones and speech protections and all the politically correct blather only goes one way.

Please know that I have no illusions about what Donald Trump will do to stop abortions — it will be absolutely nothing. The point is those horrifically mystified as to why evangelicals can support Trump when he's such a brutish lout simply cannot understand that Trump represents the potentiality of some temporal power to push against what I will for these purposes call the Hillary Clinton agenda.

This agenda is hellbent on making sure something like abortion is made available at any cost, because those who revere it believe it is about women's rights protections and couch it in that language. The problem is that half the babies aborted are females, so are they truly doing what they say they'll do on behalf of all women? It goes without saying the other half are males, so is not this agenda a sexist one if women insist on murdering their unborn male children?

What about the men who get abortion-minded women pregnant? Because of the radical feminist track that runs through much of society today, men have been absolved of their responsibilities in this area, and as such is it not just as sexist to refuse to hold them accountable? To be honest, Donald Trump himself does not appear to be someone who would do much about that either.

Funny, those children. They have no safe zone, do they? Imagine, a mother's womb is one of the most hazardous places for someone to speak freely about their desire to live. Seems to me they have a pretty good case against the flourishing intolerance expressed against them. I'd say one could be considered "triggered" when attacked with a dose of acid and a pair of forceps.

 

Evangelicals are livid about dozens of items populating the Hillary agenda, and they are legitimately concerned about their safe zone.

If someone censures a person of color for something completely unrelated to their skin color he or she is still called a racist. Don't think this is hazardous? Just look at hate crimes laws — more and more of them are being put in the books for more and more behaviors officially labeled "racist".

If someone watches the value of their productive labor unduly or excessively confiscated to support a massive influx of those who will destroy their communities and livelihoods — the very things that generate the capital investment and charitable support for those where they are — he or she is called a xenophobe.

If someone respects the truth that wealth redistribution at the point of a gun merely eviscerates the incentive for anyone to labor to produce the wealth so there is indeed enough for the most disadvantaged in society, he or she is called a greedy bastard.

If someone asserts that Darwinian descent through modification is a fantasy merely because it has been proven scientifically to be false (confirmed by hundreds of reputable Ph.D.'s bold enough to see the truth) thus demolishing the materialist world view that still thrives and drives much of the godless activity that devastates family, community, even nation, he or she is called a dangerous ignoramus.

If someone insists that sexual activity outside the marriage relationship between a mature adult man and a mature adult woman destroys the lives, bodies, and souls of those engaging in it (along with a quite few people around them), he or she is called a bigoted, homophobic, backwoods bucktoothed Neanderthal.

If someone firmly objects to rescuing people from the continuing rotten choices they make because they'd rather graciously teach them righteousness, and perhaps even the One from whom it comes, he or she is tarred as cold and heartless when refusing to join the Hillary Clinton fire brigade (and contribute a good portion of his/her income for the "privilege").

 

People in this country who respect righteousness, truthfulness, authentic justice, and plain common sense behavior are very nervous that they are going to prosecuted in some way for the crappy things other people do because the nation's mandarins consider those nervous "someones" didn't do enough to stop it.

 All of this nonsense is powered by a philosophy that breeds and thrives in the hearts and minds of devout humanists: postmodernism. It was born in the Jesuit-powered university where even its own scholars acknowledge its logical incoherence but still gleefully watch it produce a bountiful harvest.

Postmodernism is the idea that each of us have our tribes, and the most powerful ones (usually those occupied by older white males) use claims of truth to oppress everyone else. Thus no truth claim is valid — all such assertions of truth are merely billy clubs used to pound others and must always be summarily dismissed. There are only "interpretive communities", places where you are hypnotically inculcated with "truths" that help you survive and as such, must be embraced by all other tribes unless they are implicitly oppressive, as most Eurocentric hegemonies dominated by white males have been.

The patent silliness of this idea can be seen in the answer to the questions, Which tribe has the truth that makes this world view claim valid? Why should this particular tribe (precisely the academia and media nexus) hold the cherished "metanarrative" that supersedes all the other ones — and on what basis? And isn't that, according to this precept, merely a power ploy to oppress those who disagree with them, particularly when in their view nothing can be truthful?

You even see this incoherence in a proud claim from Hillary Clinton herself. She expressly extols the notion that the white power structure has an "implicit bias" and is responsible for "systemic racism" and that she is the one to fix it. How can that be when she herself is a white individual and a prominent member of the reigning hegemony? Either there really isn't this wonky-qualified racism she speaks of, or if there is then she isn't qualified by her own definition to address it. It cannot sustain itself logically, it commits suicide as a fine apologist once put it.

The reality is postmodernism is simply the predominant excuse for people to practice godlessness across the board. If Darwinism, as renowned atheist Richard Dawkins once said, makes it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist, postmodernism makes it possible for an atheist to browbeat others with the proud boast that you shouldn't browbeat others.

 

This philosophy has been fully institutionalized, and while I'd say most don't even know what it is, they do know what its effects are. Look around. The heaping slough of racism, sexism, xenophobia — and all the deceit, destruction, and death that results — isn't there for any reason than it willfully festers in the hearts of evil people and because it is such low-hanging fruit the mandarins feed and nourish it then smile and spew how splendid they are at addressing it.

That's how Cain works. It is all about making things so abjectly wretched that people without God will actively rebel against the ordained potentates. It is proficiently accomplished by deep background World operatives legitimizing Caesar's work, and what is so heartbreaking is that so many Christians are in the mix of this rebellion.

Hey! It's a political reality show! Full of all the sneering and screeching and throwing of folding chairs at each other! In real reality! Why can't we be a part of it! I mean, if Hillary wins, we can all have a real-live revolution! Throw in the pitchforks, shotguns, and torches! Woo-hoo!

It is so enticing, it really is. This is why many Christians are what I've called Catholicists. Even if they dwell in the most evangelical sounding churches and worship communities, if they vote and campaign and rant and holler about the temporal political things that are merely Cain's duly authorized political activities, they are simply doing what Rome's System operatives want them to do.

The glories of the real, true, bountiful Kingdom of God cannot come through Caesar. As much as Donald Trump appears to be a savior for those who do desperately want to push against the Hillary agenda, he will do none of what you think he will do.

Please, it will be perfectly fine if Hillary Clinton becomes president. Yes she is gargantuously corrupt. Yes she is a complete lightweight with scant leadership ability. Yes she will do despicable things as Caesar's top executive of U.S. governance. The truth is even if shortly Clinton is forced to drop out in favor of someone like Elizabeth Warren or later gets impeached or something happens that takes Hillary out of the equation, the Hillary agenda will still be driven with break-neck force by its obsessive handlers.

The agenda's legion of Hillary voters and System rent-coveters are so seduced by the humanist materialist dogma that they will fight tooth and nail to protect it because they feel so threatened by the Catholicist version of churchianity that to them represents the worst of judgmentalism, hypocrisy, and mean-spiritedness. Never mind that they are just as much all over these things themselves, especially when their devotion to the Hillary agenda explicitly involves more of a commitment to "re-educate" those foolish religious folk.

The culture war now raging bigger and brighter and bolder, and it is so because it is made to be that way. The key is that from those things perhaps people would see how plainly harrowing it all is and seek out the only One who can save them.

What if you actually did come to Christ as He is? As the One who'd like to make His home your heart? Allow Him to bring healing and wholeness into your life? Allow Him to give you a life full of mercy, forgiveness, and peace? How about that?

Thing is, in this politically venomous environment, what will happen to you when you do share the Kingdom with grace and truth? When you do confess that you're a sinner saved by grace and want others to know that racism and racialism, sexism and sexualism, and any other sin may be taken out completely but only by Christ? What will happen when you extend His gentle hand to others with a glowing countenance and a joyful heart?

Jesus said people would drag you away and flog you. That they'd kill you and say they're doing it for their god. That they'd hate you simply because they hate Him. Ouch, sounds harsh.

But you'd rapturously abide in Him and abundantly dwell in the Kingdom.

Right now you're already being viciously marginalized, with the most extreme prejudice. If you believe Clinton and Trump are really going to save you, you're being played — you can always see one of the most visible demonstrations of that at the Alfred E. Smith dinner held every year where the candidates for president yuck it up with the institutional celebrities who do Cain's ecclesiastical work. To them you're just a tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy nut — accompanied by the commensurate uproarious laughter all around.

At least some people are happy.

I wonder about the truly marginalized, like the unborn child in an abortion clinic.

 

I'd like to close simply by referring you to a nice piece from a fine web endeavor, The Federalist. I don't agree with everything they write, and they are still infected by some Catholicist thinking — it is rare to find anything that isn't — but it is still one of the most sincere, thoughtful, articulate webzines I've found. I opened this home page piece with a reference to a frightening piece from a New York Times about how your devotion to Cain must involve doing what the writer (and his huge cohort of handlers) say or else.

This piece by Gracy Olmstead is a wonderfully lucid case for understanding about what happens when we give too much of our devotion to Caesar. Again, it isn't about remonstrating against Cain — he does his job as he must. It is merely about making your devotion to God, truly, richly, fully — and understanding that whatever happens in any given election will not matter if there are a good number of followers of Christ being Him to others.

I encourage you to read it, and my prayer is that these home page words and Olmstead's words will provide some measure of intellectual comfort and spiritual strength for you over the next several months.

Postscript — November 11 2016: Since we now know who won the presidential election I should make note of it. Donald Trump upset media-darling Hillary Clinton by taking the "blue wall" in the Great Lakes states, and by enjoying enough of "Middle America" mobilized to give the Hillary agenda the collective middle finger, for all the reasons listed above.

Once again, however, the culture war still rages as long as anyone tries to violently engage Cain's legacy. It is what it is, it does what it does — Trump will immerse himself in its purposes no less zealously than a Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama has.

The only way out is to abjure this realm, enter the Kingdom by the shed blood of the Lamb, and find the authentic contentment every human was created to enjoy.

 

Notes, definitions, explanations

The devil hath power t' assume a pleasing shape.

- Hamlet, Act II, Scene II

On the morning of Thursday, December 8, 2016, during the half-hour time period of 7:00 am to 7:30 am, radio talk show personality Doug McIntyre and his cohorts engaged in the second most significant conversation ever. The subject was

 

Truth.

 

Now yes, much like Pilate, everyone is asking "What is truth?" It is an important question, and with the exception of all the inane epistemological naval-gazing among the gruesomely erudite, I think we all pretty much have a bead on most of it. Even the most rabid relativist will call the police when he gets socked.

McIntyre et al spoke deeply and sincerely about what a prominent dictionary company named the top new word of the year: post-truth. They'd even broached a related subject: post-facts — with McIntyre bringing up one of his favorite and interminably belabored lines from a celebrated politician, "You're entitled to your own opinion but you're not entitled to your own facts."

At one point he conveyed that critically profound example that makes truth something we should really be paying more careful attention to no matter how much the humanist stridently preaches subjectivity regarding anyone who disagrees with him:

"When I drive on a bridge I want it built by a guy not with an opinion but a slide rule! I want him to know physics!"

It was a thoroughly engrossing discussion, and sorry, I don't have a link to it. You may be able to find it at the website of the radio station (KABC in Los Angeles for your edification).

The fact is we're all having this conversation anyway. Even when we're lying, we're giving great credibility to the truth because without it, the lies mean nothing. I've even been given over to the truth that there is actually no such thing as falsehood. Oh yes there are liars, the presence of whom prove the point.

But yeah, now it's the epistemology, yet again I don't think you need to be a certified scholar genius to grasp that there are limits to our knowing, and that yes, there are limits whether or not someone is lying.

Or doing a number of phenomenally sophisticated things to twist the truth to get you to feel, think, believe, or even behave a certain way.

This is why having and holding some trusted security regarding the truthful things we do know is paramount for insightful understanding and staying above the disinformation sewage. What is that security? Better, Who is that security?

The recent mainstream media hysteria over "fake news" is the latest example of this expansively employed sophistry, casuistry, and dissembling. So much has been said about what it is all about, I'm not getting into it here. In fact, this piece by Robert Tracinski over at The Federalist is about as good as any in print, and if you like video, check out Black Pigeon Speaks' insightful expose.

I'd merely like to add a few observations of mine, and of course get at what the first most significant conversation is. That a bit later.

Shortly after Donald Trump was elected US president, a New York Times editorial piece got a lot of attention from variously striped pundits and politicos. In "The End of Identity Liberalism" Columbia professor Mark Lilla wrote about liberals cooling down a bit with what I called in my last home page piece "The Hillary Agenda". Of course with Hillary Clinton now fully dispatched it could be called simply "The Agenda" because it doesn't matter who they prop up as its most politically and culturally visible standard-bearer, it will still plow its way through society.

Lilla was critiqued from several sides, but I'd bet very few objected to the poison pills strategically placed throughout. He urged all Agenda zealots to be more tolerant and conciliatory, and while that sounds good, it is mostly just another compartment in the Trojan horse.

He contaminates his entire treatise a mere few paragraphs in by enthusiastically insisting, essentially, that certain racialist groups have helped us all improve our sensibilities — no, the truth is their racist hatred only stirs up bitterness and endangers many more lives. He considers Affirmative Action programs have helped minorities — no, the truth is they only generate massive institutionalized condescension and so debilitates minority individuals that their lives are endangered. He added Hollywood is doing great service by getting us to be more respectful of LGBTQ+ things — no, the truth is increased acceptance of sexual abuse crimes only breeds more emotional violence and, again, endangers lives.

As much as Agenda indoctrinairians like Mark Lilla urge us to go beyond identity politics, the truth is you can't. No one can. Lilla et al only want everyone to have the identity they want them to have.

Unless you live in a cave, you do identity politics. You have an identity (who you are), and it involves politics (how who you are is cashed out among others). The real question is are you doing that within the realm of the World (the only thing Agenda adherents know) or from the Kingdom (the place where genuine followers of Christ share truth boldly and extend grace abundantly).

Those who think Donald Trump is their valiant foil need a good dose of truth. They're convinced he'll save the conservative's day, that he'll push hard against the Agenda, that he'll bully his way through it now that he's president.

He won't. He will certainly enable it more, give it more enraged impetus if anything — and he'll definitely further its reach by obsequiously empowering its Operatives to do their business as they must.

A few weeks after his election he held a "Trump Tech Talk" high above Manhattan in his posh penthouse boardroom, inviting the ten most eminent technology firm executives to lightly converse about things. The photo-op banter didn't go much beyond "Let's all get along and do splendid tech things together awright!" What was most telling was who had Donald Trump's ear, and in any empire you may always identify those with the most influence by noting who sits closest to the potentate. 

In the photograph to Trump's right is the vice-president-elect Mike Pence, someone who claims to be "a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican in that order." Thing is "Christian" to Mike Pence and most of the oblivious World devotees means Roman Catholic, and Pence is a devout life-long practitioner.

To Trump's left is Peter Thiel, an individual who wasn't even among the execs cited as attending but is nonetheless mega-rich and mega-powerful — a highly visible and respected investor, activist, and homosexually-minded crusader on the front lines of promoting sodomism. Trump has already promised to be very LGBTQ+ friendly, and evangelical darling Mike Pence is right there to give sexual abuse the church's imprimatur.

Trump will lead the United States with the fully requisite amount of Devout Romanism and Radical Selfism poured into his soul... Hegelian synthesis on steroids. That'll be fun.

Then there's this individual: next to Pence is Sheryl Sandburg, Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, and what do you know — voilà, there's the most virulently invigorating dissemination machine on the planet right now.

And we're right into Facebook's latest craze, providing fake news watchdogs to vet stories for their authenticity. A few squawkers are protesting on free speech or ideological grounds, and they have some good points. But the strongest case regards the System putting all this in place because they must keep a reprobate populace in check. It's their job. Indeed very few are asking this significantly penetrating question: How many "fake news" stories are put out by the Operatives themselves to provoke the opposition they seek to legitimize Caesar's grip?

The most pressing question then is one very few ask, and among the few who do ask it they almost always look in the wrong places for the answer. The question:

The visible puppets there in the boardroom and the deep politics operatives bilging the disinformation -- Where do these people get their world view, one that gets constantly, vibrantly streamed into the mainstream consciousness? From where, or from whom, does that come?

We lose sight of the truth that there have always been "watchdogs" in place to build and maintain our own proficiently robust bullshit detectors, namely schools and churches! But because schools have been completely co-opted by the System and churches have been thoroughly marginalized, the System is now setting up these situations in which we all must trust that they know best how to process truthfulness.

What I see when I look at those schools and churches are three kinds of people who are suffering the most from tremendous intellectual turmoil, and it is getting worse — the endgame has always been total control of their hearts by Cain's legacy producing the rank spiritual dissolution that comes with it.

Teenagers, those aged 13-19, the youngest of today's Millennial generation, are woefully ill-equipped to discern truth from error. They are ripe for the most benighted World indoctrination, as it is many of them have already fallen into the sodomists' trap. They are the Agenda's most promising recruits, and have been so for years. Interestingly there are still a few who value sexual health among opposite-sex adults, but they are being muzzled by the viciousness of the rampant sodomist voice. For the most part, however, teenagers everywhere are taught and taught and taught the Agenda's curriculum.

Men are also being hammered. I believe there is a subtle, sophisticated, but very twisted modern-day Lysistrata movement going on, not by all women by any means — but more and more women are joining the Agenda zealotry and demanding that men buckle to their ungodly requests that they be more like them. I fully agree that more men must understand what righteousness really is, but they may do that by being the men Christ made them to be. What we need is not more Promise Keepers type stuff which is just miserable Catholicized browbeating, but churches being more virile, abandoning the System, and establishing the Kingdom as Christ's rock to dying World devotees.

Evangelicals themselves are terribly unprepared to respond to the Agenda's evils. They should be challenging sodomism's arguments with articulate truths about its destruction of body and soul, but they don't. They should also be full-on charitable grace in those circumstances, but they aren't because they're too damn Catholicized. They worship in churches beholden to the World with its 501c3 contracts and are subject to either milquetoast messages with no Scriptural substance or they're pounded by do's and don't's that drive congregants into the arms of the World's alternative — it sounds so much more sweet and caring!

When will this perfect storm of spiritual corruption reach critical mass? I could provide an illustrative exhibition of events happening right now that are leading to the implosion of civilization: birth rates are consistently down in most industrialized nations, last year drug abuse deaths in the US outnumbered auto deaths, gun related deaths in Chicago during the Obama term as president — mostly black-on-black from gang violence — have nearly matched the number of deaths in Iraq during the Bush term. And this is not even to touch on the destabilization from widespread sectarian migrant disruption as well as other developments we never see from our tunnel vision mass media.

Honestly, I think there aren't many who can't see the impact of all this, they know the truth. Most just think the reasons are not what they really are.

 

What is the reality?

That is in the first most significant conversation one could have.

Remember, when Pilate asked Jesus, "What is truth?" he wasn't asking the question because he wanted to know truth. He only wanted to protect his temporal authority. Pilate didn't give a rat's nard about truth, he merely feared Jesus' presumed threat to Rome and his own comfortable place in ruling it. Essentially it was, "What is the real actual truth about this supposed threat to Rome?"

Most everyone is like Pilate.

"I don't care what truth is, just as long as it doesn't threaten my world, truthfully."

Ahh.

Rome is there because God put it there, that's true. It is also true that the US federal government, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Federal Reserve banking system is today all of what Rome was. An integral part of their duties is to authoritatively perpetuate the greatest fake news story of them all: the World System Jesus is the same one as the one written about in the Bible. The System has hundreds of them, and is quite rigorously comprehensive in its use of each one.

Do you know which one is which?

Are you familiar with each one's identity?

And do you know the identity of the Real One?

That is why the first most significant conversation anyone could ever have is the one he or she has with Jesus — yes, the One who has Caesar's head under His foot. Oh Caesar is there because Jesus put him there, true, true. But Jesus let Caesar have his way with Him at that one point in history expressly so He could die in your place for your wrongdoing so you could live forever with The One Who Made You And Loves You With His Life.

 

One glimmer of brightness from that radio talk show conversation of the morning of December 8 was related to a crucial component of living by the Kingdom. In and around all the still very meaningful talk of truth, McIntyre made this remark.

"We should really start looking at things through the eyes of a small child."

Yes, very true.

Jesus even said that, right there in Scripture.

What does that look like, that childlike faith? I can think of no better example than pouring out these words from a modern hymn in worship to your Father:

 

Let all things rise and bless Your name

All things made right and new again

O Lord our God, Your goodness

Is free and boundless

Is reaching endless through it all

 

Can you see truth like that?

Can you see it, hear it, revel in it as a small child does?

Can you see, better live the Kingdom with the filthy sepulchers of deceit and dissipation, of pride and power, of sin and the System all around you?

 

The only way there is by The Word.

 

***

Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Anti-Christ is coming, even now many Anti-Christs have come. This is how we know it is the last hour.

- First letter of John, second chapter, 18th verse

"Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!"

- Jesus, 18th chapter of Matthew, seventh verse

 

"You can't pray a lie -- I found that out."

- Huckleberry Finn, from Mark Twain's book

In March of 2007, ten years ago this month, F. Tupper Saussy passed away (he's on the right in the photo). They say he died of a heart attack, but he was only 70 years old, committed to healthy living, and reinvigorated after just publishing a new album of musical items he liked a lot. Since very little is public about the circumstances surrounding his death, I still wonder about it. I'm not entirely sure he died of natural causes. To be honest, there is a small part of me that wonders if he is even dead at all.

A crucial part of his seminal work Rulers of Evil was elucidating the element of invisibility among deepest politics shapers of a reprobate populace's hearts and minds. The Jesuits were disestablished in 1773 for the explicit purpose of doing their work more proficiently. The Superior General at the time "died" in order to better arrange revolution-minded early Americans to install a system of government — a federal republic — invented by Rome and best suited to draw Protestants away from pure devotion to Christ and instead to an obsessive allegiance to the World System ultimately governed from the Vatican.

Really, why wouldn't Saussy have some visceral fascination with such a brilliant Sun-Tzuan tactic? When he was open and bold about offering his services to worship assemblies interested in becoming ungrafted to the System, he had no takers. No wonder — the modern church is so richly Catholicized they haven't a clue about what he said, it is the most vulgar gibberish to them. Having some modest email correspondence with him up to his death, I could sense the discouragement.

Why not disappear completely from the limelight of crazy tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy kook and actually find a way to put himself in a position to effectively minister these truths to people who actually have Christ ruling their hearts? Somewhere, somehow, as the Kingdom's professor, much as Laurence Richey shortly after his supposed death back in 1775 was the System's professor to the delegates in Philadelphia?

I'm not saying I know for sure about any of this, of course I don't. It is intriguing nonetheless. Thing is, as great a scholar of history and Scripture as he was, people who have Christ ruling in their hearts may be just as bold and articulate in sharing ROE truths as a resurrected Tupper. They're all there, those truths, in ROE. It is pretty straight-forward. Not any different than Scripture, really. In fact the principle applies about Christ. No one wants a book, they want flesh-and-blood people. You may read Scripture, know Truth, and then be Jesus to others.

Jesus said as much.

And with all due respect to Tupper, every truth and every principle in ROE is in Scripture. You'd fully understand the Kingdom-System contrast if you'd just look there. Tupper merely adds compelling historical and sociological context.

Alas, even Jesus knew why it doesn't happen, why the Kingdom doesn't advance. He said it a number of times. Paul repeated it a number of times. Isaiah wrote about it first, but it'd been going on since Cain set up the city where people can wallow about pretending:

"'Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.' Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed."

 

I've been taken with reading my favorite book from The Chronicles of Narnia again. Sorry, even though many Christian-minded folks say C.S. Lewis was an occultist of some sort and must be rejected, I think they're misguided. Yes, I can see some questionable items, but no follower of Christ has a pristinely clean ministry. At least some rough humanity contaminates each of our efforts to be faithfully immersed in God's service.

Lewis was definitely one of the best, simply because he enlivened an awesome thing God created that I believe too many legalistically-spirited evangelicals dismiss:

The imagination.

Yes, the imagination may be a mistress as Victor Hugo once famously quipped, but you'd have to talk with Jesus about the use of imagination. He expected His listeners to use it every time he spoke in parables, merely so they'd get it. Excuse me, but I need my imagination thriving — yes, fully devoted to worshipping God in Spirit and in Truth, that is paramount — but I need God mobilizing it because this World System and its virulent impact on wounded, hurting, spiritually destitute people is one ugly bastard.

One particular instance from one of the Narnia books is one I wanted to address a bit now. It is from The Silver Chair, and just before the climax of the story two children and a marshwiggle — Eustace, Jill, and Puddleglum (with whom I find a profound identification) — have discovered a long lost prince deep in the cavernous underground of the Narnian world.

Prince Rilian speaks with eloquence, gentility, and grace but Lewis does a masterful job of showing the reader that all is not well. His demeanor is too refined, too boisterous, too gay (in the traditional sense) — you know, he is someone who always has a smile on his face but you know it is pasted there, that there is something going on.

Rilian reveals that every evening he is to sit in a chair, the silver one, and that while he is restrained there he comes under a spell from which he spews the most ghastly things. He implores them to swear off untying this entranced Rilian or acceding to his demands.

They say they will.

Reading this, knowing that the Rilian in the chair is the one who is actually sound, lucid, and for those brief moments not under the spell, I pondered.

What would I do? Would I be lying in promising to firmly disregard the interjections of the sitting supposedly insane prince?

Furthermore, how often do we submit to the mandates put upon us by those who appear to know quite a bit, indeed are particularly strident about their requests, much because they are quite emotionally vested in it? How often do we believe with all presumed conviction that we do know precisely what they are saying and will act accordingly, even though ultimately, veritably it keeps us from the embrace of our Lord and Savior?

How much is this accomplished by World Operatives to corral their subjects?

 

I share this because while Saussy's Rulers of Evil is not a bestseller and, really, generally registers a blip on the horizon of meaningful truth considerations, books about behavioral economics fly off the shelves. Behavioral economics is a relatively new field of study and it is marauding through the mainstream as very very very truthful things to know.

A new book out by über-author Michael Lewis is The Undoing Project, and it is a paean of sorts to the two gentlemen who started it all, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. A number of years ago they started going whole hog with research about all of our biases, you know, the ways we behave irrationally whenever we make decisions about things. The idea is that far too often we choose the least beneficial option simply because of the way it was presented or the way our brains do dumb things.

Kahneman actually wrote a wildly popular book called Thinking Fast and Slow, which asserts that sometimes we must think fast about things and sometimes we must think slow about things and most times we don't know the difference, and, well, he put in the mix a lot of fancy psychological jargon and scholarly sounding theories, and, well, there ya go. That's pretty much it — even so Kahneman got the Nobel in Economics for his earlier work (Tversky would've gotten it too but he passed away a few years earlier and by rule the Nobel isn't awarded posthumously.)

Lots of other prominent behavioral economists are out and about, Steven Leavitt of Freakonomics fame, there's Nassim Talib, George Akerlof (who happens to be married to Fed Chair Janet Yellen, that's rich), to some extent there's Tyler Cowen, Dan Ariely, Malcolm Gladwell, and there are Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, they're really out there — I'm sure there're others who'd be offended I didn't mention them here, the best academics get offended easily — but they all essentially do the same thing:

 

Listen to me now, listen, this is the truth no matter what that silly person tied to the silver chair says, this is the truth, really it is, make sure you promise not to believe anything else:

Here are the things that are irrational, and you must fight with me against them by continuing to listen to the ways you are irrational and the ways my rationality will save you.

 

That sounds so righteous, it really does, except that their claim that there is such a thing as irrationality is unrighteous. It is rational, it truly is, as is everything else anyone does. Everything — totally, completely, fully rational.  

All these scholastically addicted dudes simply can't get this truth because they know nothing of God. Kahneman and Tversky both proudly confessed they were atheists. I don't know about the faith claims of the others but I'd venture to say that fully entranced by the Jesuit-plowed academia, they consider God merely a fanciful idea for the, shall we say, less cerebral among us. And because of that they plow into the earthen works of society the asinine idea that there is such a thing as irrationality. No, again, if you look closely, you'll discover that everything is rational. The key is that is may just not be righteous.

I'd love to provide example after example, and my vision (when I have time!) is to put up a page of the myriad claims of biases these guys take to the mat, and articulate the problems with each one. I will tell you I did some of this already in this home page piece from a few years ago, as well as this one.

Real quick, one of the best ones in their mind is confirmation bias, the idea that when we have an idea of what we think is true in our minds, and we find something that confirms it, we say "Hey! Confirmation!" when neither the idea or the confirming "truth" is veritable merely because most of us common folk just don't have faculties to be authentically unbiased.

The extraordinarily simple problem with this is not that there is some confirmation or that we seek confirmations to ideas we have, that's rational and natural and normal. The problem is with the idea — is it truthful or not? If a claim is truthful then any confirmation merely adds to its veracity. If it is not truthful then the righteous thing to do is to discover the truth! To stay in the deception because it is quite comfortable is perfectly rational!

It may not be righteous, however, simply because the untruthfulness of a thing may indeed harm somebody. Confirmation bias means nothing. Whatever it is that is actually truthful is everything.

What of the behavioral economists? Since everything is, in fact, rational, wouldn't insisting a thing irrational and trying to fit things into that theory to make it seem true make one guilty of ::gulp:: confirmation bias? Could you, behavioral economics guru, be guilty of behavioral economics bias?

These people have the appalling temerity to claim to know exactly what the standard is for The Rational in order to proclaim how people are messing it up — it is a necessary part of their work. Look carefully at how many presumptions are made about what people should be deciding. "You'd have been better off with that instead of the thing you chose." Really?

Who says?

If they don't trust in a God who's already set the standards for goodness, beauty, truth, righteousness, justice, fulfillment, contentment, ethics, mercy, charity, respect, and a dozen other objective standards that can only come from a teleologically transcendent source, then why should we listen to them?

Ah, I know.

 

I teach young 17 year-olds who've spent their entire short lives having their psyches filled to the brim with a shitload of the behavioral economics idiocy shoved in there by mandarins sworn to keep them from Christ as adroitly as they can.

One time recently I had finished sharing with a classroom of these impressionable people the way things really work against what they are told all the time. A particularly bright gal who is always vocal about things but I know is deeply wounded inside and whose world view has been molded by these people said something rather thoughtful.

"We're not having all this explained to us the way it should."

No shit.

For people who are hammered with the lie that there is such a thing as anything irrational, there is only the rational/irrational dichotomy to govern how to think about things — the idea of anything righteous has no place in a city outside of the presence of The Standard.

It is much like another instance from the Narnia books I'd like to close with, this one in The Last Battle. It is the last of Lewis' books in the series, and it is phenomenal — another marvelous Biblical allegory in the set. It perfectly describes what Saussy spoke about in ROE, and what The Catholicist Nation premise is all about.

A nefarious ape has employed a dimwitted donkey named Puzzle to disguise himself as the Christ character, a lion named Aslan. The entire land of Narnia has been seduced by the things the ape has been saying in his name.

After Jill rescues Puzzle from being used as "Aslan" to compel obedience to a wickedly autocratic agenda, Prince Tirian believes by exposing the ruse and proving its verity to those captivated by it, he will successfully draw people's attention to truth, to grace, to what is actually righteous — to the true Son of God.

He comes across a cohort of dwarves who've been emboldened to protect their own domain from anyone's attempt to take over Narnia, and Tirian enthusiastically attempts to disabuse the dwarves of their inaccurate conception of Aslan.

It fails miserably simply because to the dwarves, Tirian is simply trying to sell them on yet another Aslan. Their exceedingly jaded skepticism aggravates Tirian so much that he realizes he cannot succeed.

What a phenomenal analogy of today's world.

So many Jesuses, and as such so much despair among those who consider there is no real way to know the Real One.

There is hope.

From the story there is Poggin the dwarf, who is someone who genuinely wants truth. He seeks, and he finds — richly encountering great joy entering into valiant service among good friends for the purpose of advancing the Kingdom in the best interests of people (as well as animals and fanciful creatures all of whom Aslan loves).

For despair there is Ginger the tomcat, who takes the narrative the ape started and cleverly exploits everything in the System's favor. In a brazen attempt to show off his intellectual prowess he confronts his lord and —

Becomes deaf and dumb.

Sounds a lot like modern academia, like modern media...

Like modern economic theory.

Now I like economics, I myself am an economics instructor. It is a science, it is about examining truthful things — mostly related to how things are valued and what goes into the decisions people make, to insightfully analyzing benefits and costs and incentives — very behavioral indeed. And it isn't really that difficult, this endeavor of examining truthful things truthfully.

Preeminent System megaphone-holder The New York Times recently put out a rare television advertisement and they want you to believe the truth is hard, among a lot of other things they say they know about this thing truth.

Interesting, their take on truth. I can almost hear Cain in the distance, "Whadd? You want me to be my brother's keeper? Okay, I'll be my brother's keeper, just watch. That city I'll build, I can make truth the citizens will believe in..." The New York Times is saying nothing other than "Let us be your truth. Look at how industrious we are at getting it and sharing it and being it, trust us."

Its handlers and its scribes employ the most sophisticated sophistry to keep the faithful in the fold — they are so good, damn good.

Yes, it does so well what it is supposed to do.

Make people deafer and dumber.

And blinder.

Jesus said so. He did. Kind of amazing all the things Jesus said about this. You may see it, right there at the tail end of the ninth chapter of John's gospel. He says He is around for judgment (wait, I thought Jesus was supposed to be all non-judgmental, what's with that?!), "that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind." Of course the authorities dismissed all this silly talk, "Hrrumph, certainly we're not blind too, are we?"

Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no sin, but now since you say 'We see', your sin remains."

For the clamorous and all those hypnotized by them, the truth isn't just hard, it's impossible. Look how loudly they feel they must blare the word. They haven't a clue — the worst is not that it is impossible, it is that it scares them to death.

Ironically, that's His name, right there in gargantuan font on their building. High above all they're unwittingly proclaiming the name of The One Who Is Truth. If they'd give up the insipid pretense, recognize their blindness and let Him make them see, they'd get it. They'd get they are in great need of a Savior who loves each one of them with His life.

This truth is not hard, not even close. It may be complicated and it may be overwhelming, but it is not unfathomable. Sadly one of the most weighty truths of all of them is from the fourteenth Psalm — it really isn't hard, this truth: The fool says in his heart there is no God. When you have no idea who Truth is, when you are a million light years from Him and the Kingdom, when you are doing things at the devil's behest and are rewarded handsomely for it, I'd say that is tremendously rational.

It is just righteous to turn to the Son.

And see, and hear, and know, and understand.

 

Then they would be healed.

 

*** 

"If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you."

- Jesus, 12th chapter of Matthew, 28th verse

 

Familiar with Wolfgang Hoffmann? No he's not the bass player for the latest trendy alternative music band. He's the featured character in the introduction to Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, a book about the ways ordinary Germans fully enabled the Holocaust's atrocities. I'd peeked a bit inside the book to examine the extent of complicity among the Roman Catholic middling leadership and laity, and while there was quite a bit, there was just as much among the vibrantly institutionalized Protestant church as well.

The Hoffmann incident is just as telling as anything throughout the book, and it is easy to see why Goldhagen used it to set up his premise.

Hoffmann was a Nazi officer administrating the turgid proceedings of "The Final Solution," and when asked by his superiors to sign a declaration promising that he would not, essentially, make lampshades from the skins of his victims, he vehemently objected.

Paraphrased: "I'm a reputable, honorable member of our civilized society," he protested, "it is beneath my stature to do such a thing. I would do the right thing anyway. That they think I would do such a barbaric thing by forcing me to swear against it is an affront!"

The glaringly obvious irony is that his entire workday was spent methodically exterminating human beings.

The even more frightening truth escapes most, however.

This is what good, wholesome human beings do.

They do human sacrifice.

They do it everywhere, not just in the abhorrent confines of the Nazi death camps. They do it in the nicest, sweetest hamlets in the most advanced industrialized nations — in America too. Any place where people proudly boast "That's not me, I'm not capable of such an act."

 

Interestingly I just happened catch a new series on pay-cable television, American Gods. I know nothing about it except what I read in the newspaper reviews, its premise: a slough of bored gods go about getting people to commit violent acts upon one another — as expressions of human sacrifice.

Wow, what a prime-time soap opera that must be!

I've always wondered, why does God demand sacrifice? What is the whole reasoning behind it? Why can't the ultra-progressive mantra of Let's just all get along no matter what and stop with this fairy tale God business be the way things should be?

I'm no expert theologian, but I think much of it has to do with the fact that, yes, unfortunately for those Pollyannas out there, each man and woman is pretty much an asshole. Hey, I may be a bit misanthropic, okay, I confess, but I'm not the only one saying it. Jesus said it too. "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God."

Even the tremendously high-minded and giant-hearted individual cannot get around the fact that everyone around them has an intractable dispensation to shit on others in some ways. I mean, I watch the humanist's demeanor change in a big way when boldly challenged with the very idea that man is a sinner and God is the only one with The Antidote. They seem to be insanely intolerant of that, and indeed, would not mind doing away with that person.

In His abounding love, however, God made a way for the doing-away part and it turns out to be pretty good for us assholes, really. First He allowed for animal sacrifices to clearly demonstrate that our sins do need atonement — that's a pretty good deal to me, if we were put on the altar we'd be in big trouble. Those sacrifices were insufficient themselves, but they did show us that God was actually merciful and forgiving.

This was all merely a foreshadowing of the sacrifice, the one God Himself took through Jesus, essentially allowing Himself to be the "doing-away-with", being the sacrifice in place of us. The whole sacrifice thing from God is all about His love, and those who genuinely follow Christ sacrifice themselves daily in their love for another.

 

Those who refuse to accept this truth must, however, engage in human sacrifice by the System. The first of these was Cain's — try to brashly show God that sacrificing another human would earn His favor. The modern Americanist version has been flourishing for some time and is powered by that overarching humanist idea that "There is no way I can do anything really bad."

The class of individual afforded the greatest protections by the reigning hegemony is now the institutionally qualified victim.

It is an obsession now to find ways to be qualified. Traditionally those who do need the charitable largesse of someone are the child, the sick, the disabled, and the elderly. Each have different strata of legitimate disadvantage, such as the classification of physical or mental disability.

What about this newest classification of disadvantage:

The irresponsible?

Does your destructive character flaw mean others must enable your behavior? And how expansive is that flaw so that a great deal of rigorous rent-gorging becomes quite lucrative?

Caesar has always been the predominant rent-processor. His capacity to distribute rental favors to those who'll augment his potency has started reaching proportions that are making codependent society quite entrenched. "I must look good," Caesar's minions proclaim in their souls, "by protecting people from the consequences of their poor choices."

The trick is the humanist in a powerful position must declare there are no poor choices — except, again quite ironically, the ones made by those critiquing that activity! This means there are certainly poor choices as much as there are wise ones. Yet the only way one may know the wise from the foolish is by

The Standard.

This is why atheism is so dangerous.

There are definitely fine, polite, nice, considerate atheists, but the issue is not that someone does a number of really good things — I'm sure Mr. Hoffmann was one of the most upstanding individuals in his community and put dinner on the table for his family every single night.

The issue is acknowledging the firm grounding for wisdom and justice. Scratch an atheist you will find a hearty concession of meaninglessness about morals and ethics and the commensurate inability to stay true to his or her own standards — ultimately they will not be good after all. Keep pushing an atheist and at some point they will break.

It is perfectly rational, however, for the atheist, progressive, humanist, Caesarian rent-glomming life to be so attractive! Everyone loathes having their not-goodness called out. Instead of confronting this ugliness authentically, they continue to wallow in the elaborate lie about it, put on a smiley face and just try to find smiley faces of fellow travelers.

The World System has so many ways to do that! It is like the high-end mall with fancy shops selling the niftiest denial methods, proficiently managed by those doing the work of Cain: no conception of God except the one he makes in his mind (see the fourth chapter of Genesis for more). The largest department store there is the one selling the best merchandise of all —

The Qualified Victim.

"On sale now! Rich utilization of your own woundedness for a vital part of the rank exploitation! You don't even have to really hurt, as long as it's sincerely believed! Best deals here! Price is practically nothing!..."

It'll only cost you your soul.

Of course that is nothing to the one who's been convinced there is no such thing.

Funny, there is a new practice — actually its been around for a while but because of the dramatically emerging world of social media it has a wild new form — "virtue signaling". This is eagerly pronouncing that you're really good with some politically correct thing so you can get in with the hip crowd somewhere, mostly in cyberspace. It is particularly pronounced in the world of victim qualifying.

"That choice is their choice but I can't say anything about that because I'm tolerant! Furthermore I'm on board with rescuing them so I can appear to everyone that I'm a really good person!"

This has become significantly institutionalized to the extent that if you are not a virtuously signaled member of Caesar's fire brigade, then you must suffer the consequences of ridicule, marginalization, ostracism, demonization, or — is it leading to this? — prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.

 

In my devotional time I am reading through Jeremiah, and he is one of my favorite prophets because there are so many places he so definitively speaks about how people do virtue signaling, really — God, don't do anything to us because we're really pretty good after all.

And he ::gasp!::

Calls them out on it.

I happened to catch something I hadn't seen before, one of those truthful gems that grip you. Right there in the eighth chapter, eighth verse:

"How can you say, 'We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us'? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie."

I'd glanced at the commentary remarks about this verse and it mentioned this was the first time scribes had been mentioned in the Bible.

Scribes.

You mean like the ones they have at The New York Times?

Now yes, I did address the Gray Lady in my last home page piece, but I can't help but close this one with another mention, much because of the marvelous metaphor I caught in a graphic novel I'd been enjoying.

I love good graphic novels, but since most are either filthy or vapid or both, it is hard to find good ones. Manifest Destiny was a decent one about a fantastic rendition of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

The fourth installment features a series of episodic flashbacks about a failed expedition sent out three years before Lewis and Clark. The leader is Captain Helm, the only survivor, and when he is at his most destitute, he has a dream in which he dines on eyeballs. He is so hungry and emaciated this seems to be the choicest meal.

Shortly he is violently overcome by what he has ingested, convulsing and exploding from what it hath wrought.

What a phenomenally great metaphor for today's God rejecter.

He wants to see but he wants to do it without wisdom — without understanding truth, justice, righteousness, morality, ethics — and in turn without real understanding of mercy, graciousness, forgiveness, and freedom from futile attempts to be good without The Standard. Throw in robust industry and compassionate charity, two transcendently Kingdom items that have no place in the System.

The New York Times is undeniably the main purveyor of the perverted version of this economy, the one that shreds the value of so many in a twisted network of human sacrifice events exclusively for the purpose of showcasing their goodness through manipulating the incessant pain of The Qualified Victim.

What's more, engendering the rent-bilging of The Qualified Victim is just today's raging pabulum infusing the entire System modus operandi — destabilize everything, from the child's simple bedroom to the chief executive's palatial office. Make rejection of God and His Kingdom appear very appealing, best accomplished by deftly compelling people to join the everything-must-be-made-good-by-Caesar crusade. No matter how good you think you are, if it isn't by Christ, the program is just more of the devil's soap opera.

Please, this is what the System is designed to do, what it is divinely authorized to do. You may immerse yourself in it as you wish, but enlist in it or rebel against it, it is all the same. You may be feverishly enticed to gorge on the eyeballs so you can have the feeling that you are privileged with some special gnostic awareness, but it is you who are being dined upon.

Look at what the New York Times publishes, please, read it carefully. Go ahead, see it for what it is. I'd recommend you do so by the mind of Christ, for without Him it is a perilous folly. Watch how the ordained scribes handsomely expose the demonic complexion of a necessary evil. They do it extraordinarily well.

Here's the more important question:

 

Who's telling the New York Times scribes what to do?

 

If you are courageous enough to go there, then that profound understanding follows. Then the wisdom. Then perhaps, just over there, near to you but far from the deep politics...

 

The Word.

 

*** 

By this we will have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until his enemies be made a footstool for his feet. For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

- Letter to the Hebrews, tenth chapter

"We should always be disposed to believe that that which appears white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."

- Ignatius of Loyola

The other night on my early evening walk I found myself strolling beneath the branches of this tree, pictured here. I'd been feeling a bit of the pain of my own woundedness and feeling it regarding that of others I'd hurt in the past, and I stopped to gaze above and ponder those things, and this tree.

I did a bit of looking about on the web and found that this is called a mimosa tree, and it has blooms of bright red wisps, hundreds of them, and I thought, yes...

They are just like my sins.

Hung there up on the tree, stained by the blood of Christ. Up there taken away, put far away by God and His eternal forgiveness. An amazing blessing, really.

I had to realize, however, that along with those of mine, many of these are the sins of others — no matter how horrific, the things others have done in the past to hurt me are there too. God's forgiveness means nothing unless I forgive others too.

It doesn't mean we turn a blind eye to the wicked things people can do to one another, that we turn a deaf ear to the rotten ways people encourage people to do horrific things.

What it does mean is that there are generally two ways to approach the interactions among men.

 

The World way and the Kingdom way.

 

I've written for 13 full years in this webzine about these ways, and blogged at least once every month augmenting them. It does indeed comprise quite a written volume, and if print publishing was not losing its viability as a means of information transmission I would love to assemble it into a decent sized book. Maybe I still will, we'll see.

But these truths don't exist merely in a modest webzine or blog, they're already fully detailed in Scripture, and I'd like to think there are a few out there who do grasp the contrast. Sadly, I see so very little to indicate many really do. I pray like a crazy man that there'd be more who'd act courageously on Kingdom truths, but, well...

 

The latest evidence of the eminently august World System song and dance is this action by Donald Trump to constrict the impact of what is regularly called "The Johnson Amendment", the provision in federal statute that prohibits church personnel from openly and actively engaging in politically partisan behavior as a condition of the church's 501c3 non-profit tax exempt status.

The idea is simple: Church bodies who officially endorse a candidate in a civil election are doing so outside the bounds of their tax exempt privilege — other politically active organizations that are generally not religious in nature do not have that same privilege.

I wrote an entire webzine piece on this phenomena, and emphasized the double-mindedness of people in a church assembly who from one side of their mouth proclaim "Jesus is Lord" while from the other either "Smith should be elected to be Lord" or "Caesar tells me I can't tell everyone we should all make Smith our Lord."

When President Trump signed this order, he did a couple of interesting things. He said, "We're giving churches their voices back." Hmm, does Caesar determine what things a group of Christ's genuine disciples may or may not say on behalf of the Kingdom? Trump's statement is true enough — for those who ask Caesar to regulate their speech. I wonder, what precisely does a Christ follower, living by His perfect law of love, need Caesar to govern regarding his speech?

Trump also directed the IRS to use "maximum enforcement discretion" in administering the new policy. Many church leaders were delighted about this — finally the U.S. government was firmly easing the threat of revocation of the tax exemption should a pastor let slip from the pulpit that he indeed favors Smith in the next election. The core problem is that this is a plain confession that a church official of any stripe is eagerly welcoming the law to govern their affairs. Scripture clearly states that the law is the power of sin but that those with Christ's name on their lips should be living by Him in Truth and Grace, above and beyond the precepts of law.

The essence of what Trump did though, really, was...

Nothing.

He did nothing that is any different than it was before. Nothing will change no matter how much oblivious pastors are now breathing easier or how much squawking legal protection organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom can let their guard down a bit. 501c3 tax exempt non-profits are under the thumb of Rome's magistrate in some measure. Most high-falutin church personnel will still be careful about what they say because they know deep inside they're compromised. Some more ferocious ones will indeed feel emboldened to let their parishioners know what's what about a given political figure.

So what. The fact is nothing will happen because the mainline church is just about dead anyway. It doesn't mean a spittle of anything is because the church is pathetically moribund, and much of that is precisely because it is so beholden to Caesar.

There are gobs of evidences to demonstrate this truth. Just browse through George Barna's work to get a taste of how wretchedly milquetoast the church has become in having a significant impact on society. Allow me to use a simple anecdotal incident to illustrate this.

 

A month ago I spent the weekend with my elderly father at his home about 100 miles away. On Sunday morning we attended the services of the area's Presbyterian church, I thought it would be nice since I grew up with a Presbyterian background and my dad is a bit more of a traditional Christian. I had not been to such a service for some time.

The church building was large and pleasant, one of those mid-size city kinds built in 1970 or thereabouts. It was well-kept and landscaped, and the parking lot had a good number of cars there. When I walked inside, however, it was very interesting, and very disturbing.

Among the attendance of about 80 all together (not even filling a fourth of the entire sanctuary), I'd say about 60 of them were 70 years old or older. Of the around 10 or so who were 20 or younger, every one of them looked like they did not want to be there.

The following Monday at the invitation of a friend I attended something called "The Skeptics Forum" in which Reasons to Believe founder Hugh Ross answers questions about science and the cosmos — his work is awesome. He shared the most amazing things about how science points to God in every instance. There were about 60 people there, but the troubling thing is no one was under the age of 30, maybe a sparse few. Most were over 40.

Where are all the Millennials?

Really? Are they all off just grooving to the latest Taylor Swift bilge — or the Christian equivalent? How much intellectual and spiritual rigor are they getting in churches today? Yes I can't extrapolate what the world of the next generation will look like from these experiences. But really, what is the reality of what's happening, is it any different beyond the conclusions of my observations here?

Because the Society of Jesus has been so successful extirpating Protestantism from the inside of the church itself, there is really no difference between the religious and the secular. Young persons today are much more likely to adopt the perspective of Caesar's officers — most significantly whatever the academia and media say they should believe and behave, much because the church is no different. In the mainline church older people are either adapting to the secular drumbeat or dying off all together. Even churches that are hip, happenin', with-it, and pimped-out for the Millennial generation are desperately stunted if they are 501c3's.

Church has merely become a social gathering place where pithy things are shared — no different from the secular counterpart whatever that may be. "Alternate spiritualities" are considered just as viable for "life enhancement." The most pronounced Americanist mantra is "This is what I believe," you know, to avoid getting somebody ticked off you'd actually know the truth, that you'd be so uncouth as to ruthlessly try to employ some oppressive power grab over them.

The benighted proficiency of the Jesuit Order has so emasculated 501c3's that they don't stand for anything anymore. They have become the quintessential "God club", just a place to hang out and smile at everyone else. There is no conviction of sin ("Don't interfere with sexual freedom") no sorrow for the horrifically wounded ("Caesar has a government program for that") no recognition of the devil's sophisticated workings ("Rome is just a meaningless Christiany thing") no desire to judge righteous judgment ("The worst thing is to be called a narrow-minded bigot") and no capacity to richly elucidate the wide deep love of a Risen Savior ("Jesus is just a fairy tale after all but we'll still humor you")

I'm convinced much of this is because churches refuse to become ungrafted and be truly, actually, fully sold out to Jesus.

 

When I looked up information about the mimosa tree, I discovered something else interesting about them. I found that the seeds and the seed pods are extremely poisonous. Made me think more about the metaphor, the seeds make for another fine part of it.

For the tree to grow the seeds must die.

But what happens if you want to eat those seeds? Maybe they are very tasty, I will never try to find out.

How many people do.

How many people are so enticed by the World System's designs and attractions that they take and eat. How many people at one time long ago were young (or young at heart!) and committed and courageous in vibrant Protestant churches drawing people to Christ and fellowshipping with them in His riches and glory?

Do you know a while back I heard about a scholarly sociology study that proved that the single most important factor in a nation's fine industrialized economy benefitting from the least amount of corruption in government was the measure of robust vibrancy of the Protestant church 100 years before? Not what it is like today, but 100 years previous. Not any old church, but the Protestant one.

Don't you find that quite telling?

What does the Protestant church look like now?

And what does that tell you about what it may be like 100 years from now?

 

Or sooner...

 

***