A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep,

the church will have clowns entertaining the goats.

- Charles Spurgeon

 

The truth will set you free.

But first it will piss you off.

- Konstantin Kisin

 

Right smack in the middle of the eleventh chapter of Matthew Jesus makes an odd reference about children. It is particularly telling for me right now because as a long-time secondary school educator I see how many children now are being raised by adults, even their very parents, who are essentially still immature children in big-people bodies. The metastasizing folly is splatting everywhere, It is harrowing.

Anyway, Jesus' peculiar discourse here comes right after He tells his listeners they are blessed if they do not stumble on account of Him, especially since John the Baptist conveyed his doubts as he sat in a prison cell. John the Baptist, having doubts? The individual who boldly announced the presence of the very Messiah Who by His love and through His death would deliver people from their sick, rotten, wicked selves? Wow. If he was feeling so dismissive, there had to be a whole lot of people doing the same thing — even in light of all the things Jesus had already said and done. He'd already healed from illnesses and delivered from demons and poured God's wisdom into the hearts and minds of any and all hearers.

Here Jesus responds this way, very intriguing:

"To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to others: 'We played the pipe for you and you did not dance; we sang a dirge and you did not mourn.'"

These children want to see a show, just like the one the System has taught them to enjoy after watching adults do their best performance art in response to some musical provocation. There may even be a bit of nervous sarcasm directed at what they see as impiety and pretense, as if they are saying "How come you won't be authentic and sincere when we play the same tunes? If not, then just amuse us with your routine hopping about (or wailing loudly as the case may be), it's fun to watch."

Jesus adds that these people are so steeped in the ways the World has told them to behave that they cannot see what is real and meaningful right in front of their very eyes. They will make excuses in order to comfortably evade acknowledging the substance of their condition, even more the full meaning of Who Jesus Really Is.

It is much like the Twitter-posted video I just saw about what the widely broadcast official blithering is like these days, the Four Stages of Mainstream Journalists. May I? It is indeed what today's generation is so used to doing with the very brutal reality happening right in front of their faces:

 

1. Gaslighting - "It really isn't happening."

2. Dismissal - "Okay it is happening, but it really doesn't mean anything."

3. Coping - "Yeah it's happening, but here is how it is actually a good thing."

4. Attack - "It is happening but it is really your fault."

 

Excruciatingly familiar.

Funny — or not so funny as the case may be — Jesus immediately follows his penetrating censure of the prevailing rationalization spectacles with some words of warning for those who imbibe them, even for entire cities including his own home town. We think of Sodom really getting it, but Jesus says it will be worse for these places. Ouch. So much for the kinder gentler New Testament God.

Except it can't go without saying that Jesus does say that finding Him, knowing Him, trusting in Him brings the greatest peace, joy, and assurance in the midst of all that. "Come to Me," He confidently says, "and you will find rest for your souls."

I share all of this because I wanted to simply republish a blog post from 15 years ago that relates to this idea about following the cues of the World versus those of the Kingdom. It blows my mind how much people believe and say the most inane things, yet when you find out where they got their ideas, you can take a step back and go, "Ohhh, um, yeah. I get it now." So many of those things are so ruthlessly destructive but they sound so nice and neat and nifty. Not only "What did you go there to expect to see?" as Jesus adds in his inquiry about the folly people embrace, but also "the Kingdom has been advancing, but violent people have been raiding it."

That post, "The Philosophy of Nothingness," from June 13 2009:

I happened to catch celebrated economist Amitai Etzioni's latest piece, "Spent," a call to reject consumerism as a way to extract ourselves from the current economic malaise. In his very first paragraph he perceptively derides the "regulation is the answer" pap, and concludes with this:

"What is needed instead is something far more sweeping: for people to internalize a different sense of how one ought to behave, and act on it because they believe it is right."

Right away it is easy to see he is a product of the World System, even a sworn operative doing its bidding, spouting about World ways to solve World problems. However eloquent he is, and he is that at some points, no one will ever be able to do anything he thinks they should do because it is missing the most critical part.

Etzioni is a wholly devout World guy because he does what all World people do all the time. He appeals to what philosopher Immanuel Kant referred to as the "categorical imperative," the idea that we should do what is right simply because we should do what is right. My question is this:

So what?

Why should I do what is right because I believe it is right? What if I believe it is right but it is a lie? And why should I do what is right if I know in the end nothing will come of it? These myopic materialists blab and blab and blab about what we all should be doing--hey, don't get me wrong! We should be doing a lot of very good things! Some of which Etzioni mentions! Being unselfish. Thinking about things beyond ourselves. Considering those around you when you make decisions. Awesome. Really--not being facetious here. Awesome stuff.

But again, here's the question I have that very few people ask. Remember the question?

So what?

The World answer to that question whatever it is will always result in a lie so pervasive that the economy looks as crappy as it does. That lie:

"Hey, I'm doing good!"

Many people even acknowledge the truth of their predicament as they're out there doing good:

"I'm doing all this work even though I have no idea why I'm doing this, and I can see no fulfillment in the end from any of this."

This is why all of Mr. Etzioni's blithering--and I do not necessarily single out Mr. Etzioni because every World inhabitant does this--is utterly, completely, abjectly pointless. It is such because it has no end-game in sight. The only end-game is the One from Whom it is all held together in the first place.

He is Jesus Christ.

What gets me is that Jesus Christ isn't in the picture at all because His image and persona and even words have been so co-opted by World operatives, particularly ecclesiastical ones, that He never enters the conversation. In fact, Etzioni mentioned something very interesting, the idea of "megalogues." These are those major discussions large groups of people, indeed whole nations have about important things.

We should be having more megalogues, really really important ones, so people can banter about things they are told the believe are really important--and they might be. But the end-game is only more blabbing. In fact I'd venture to say if anyone suggested any kind of closure to a vibrant "megalogue" he'd be summarily ostracized by the tolerance police.

I'd like to go a bit further and suggest that beyond megalogues there are metalogues, sort of overarching conversations made up of megalogues. I'd also like to further suggest that there are only two metalogues. Yes, only two.

There is the World metalogue and the Kingdom metalogue.

The World metalogue is the one Etzioni and every World inhabitant are in. Most, if not all, are set in motion by World operatives whose job it is to direct the metalogue stage. All this banging about of these ideas results in no lasting meaningful resolution at all, but it definitely comprises a lot of emotional and spiritual violence. I will add that appearing in this metalogue are thousands and thousands of Jesuses, each one used to buttress someone's mildly novel ideas in a megalogue.

The Kingdom metalogue is the one in which Jesus speaks, The Jesus, and people who desire truth and grace and joy and authenticity listen and then act on those words. It is the only metalogue in which true genuine charitable agape is expressed, and as such people can see the end-game: eternity with the One Who Loves with His Very Life.

The World metalogue is only about working hard to have nothing, which Etzioni speaks about throughout his piece. He even moralizes constantly about which things we should settle for, and which things reflect too much acquisitiveness. This is a classic characteristic of Catholicist thinking: be in some form of privation for privation's sake. What an awful existence, and while Jesus does say we should not be selfish, He never says we cannot enjoy the fruits of what He made us to be able to produce.

The Kingdom metalogue is about trusting in Christ who has everything, and, hey, just as the very best friend one could have, wants us to enjoy it all.

Funny, Etzioni does mention the transcendent nature of what's really meaningful, but stops at Chinese water-coloring. Don't get me wrong, I like Chinese water-coloring, I really do.

But, come on.

Which would you rather be with?

A painting, or the Lord of Heaven and Earth?

  

I do enjoy reading philosophers, particularly the most famous ones —  after all they are those most exploited in shaping World inhabitant sensibilities. It isn't that they aren't extraordinarily valuable in helping us all be better thinkers, but they are such experts at keeping us looking at "reeds swaying in the wind," than seeing what is actual reality. It seems the most recent are bent on getting us to doubt it by claiming the words we use can never mean anything real, at least that we can actually know, you know, the Wittgensteins and Heideggers and all the deconstructionist blappers like Foucault and Derrida. They are so cool because now we can use all sorts of excuses to wiggle out of our spiritual predicament. After all words can never reflect anything truthful, and as such we can never then be held responsible for our actions! Woo-hoo!

In fact it really isn't so much those philosophers as those spewing it all through the Jesuit-administered university system. Some benighted idea gets out there and acquires enormous amounts of attention and admiration? It's all just population control on behalf of the legitimately authoritative duties of the Roman Catholic Ecclesiocratic World System.

How many hundreds of times have I sorrowfully seen, heard, read, endured the following, an admission I recently clipped — and forgive me I didn't note from where, doesn't matter, it ravages the psyches of people everywhere. A young lady writing a published article "explains what she believes it takes to be 'a certified Catholic.' She wrote, 'I've only occasionally believed in God and I wouldn't consider myself a religious person. Despite this, I've been baptized, had Communion, and been confirmed — meaning I'm a certified Catholic... I go to church twice a year, on Easter and Christmas, to make my grandmother happy.'"

Oh my. Such abject heartbreak. Such unyielding submission to the Grand Precepts of the Great Performance Art Showcase in the name of virtue-signaling about how ferociously scientific one is — only to find it is pure unadulterated emptiness.

 

Those dwelling richly in the Kingdom can rely not only on the words but on the Living Word, the robust, stalwart, and eternal verity of The One who is The Metalogue. Contrast the just-above with the following — really, just one of many such rapturous words there He carries with Him, that are Him:

 

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, "Your God reigns!" Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy. When the Lord returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes. Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord will lay bare His holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.

 

Come into His courts and find that peace, joy, and rest.

You can. You're invited, you are. He wants you to come, after all He shed His blood so you could.

 

And by all means, share Him with your children.

 

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Discipline your children for in that there is hope.

Do not be a willing party to their death.

- From the 19th chapter of Proverbs

 

We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education

and be surprised when they come home as Romans.

- Voddie Baucham  

 

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Sorry but I cannot close without one more parting gift. There is so much, but I just want to add this one from fine podcaster Jeremy at Jerm Warfare.  I've collected quite a few images, memes, cartoons, caricatures — wonderful for illustrating these critical truths. I'd love to include so many more, but some day, some day. Anyway, enjoy.

 

 

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