Archive for the 'Religion' Category

Via WiscoDave, this trivial missive on the origin of rights by Alan Korwin at America Handgunner.

Was Thomas Jefferson wrong? Not about everything, just this: “Rights are unalienable.” If rights are unalienable, the Chinese people, all one-and-a-half billion of them, would be armed. Women living in oppressed countries would be free. In fact, all peoples would be free, and armed, and tyrants would be under the gun — not the other way around. Sorry, Tom, rights are not unalienable.

Rights are easily lost. That’s the truth. With apologies in advance to my wild-eyed, dyed-in-the-wool libertarian friends and their utopian ideals, your rights and your property are neither unalienable nor derived from the natural order of the universe. Your right to your life, your guns, and everything else you think you own is based on pure and raw power.

You own what you own because you can exercise dominion over it, you can demand it. The moment you lose or relinquish that power, or someone with greater power takes it from you, your home or your pencil is no longer yours. This is the ugly truth of life on planet Earth. Jefferson was wrong. What he said is nice, it has served us well in its own way, it’s just not the case.

This sounds like the Nietzschean will to power, with a dose of philosophical ignorance sprinkled in.

There is one commentary on this at Zelman Partisans, but I thought I would add by saying that rights have as their origin and basis the Almighty.  The writer doesn’t even know against whom to turn his shots.  Libertarianism has nothing at all to do with this, as they don’t ground rights in God’s law-word.

He is confusing the ground of rights with the recognition of those rights by the state.  It matters in the extremum, because a man will answer for both his beliefs and his actions and behaviors in eternity.

If you believe that your rights have as their basis something other than the eternal, immutable law-word of God, that is a cosmic offense to your maker because He has ordered you to take every thought captive to the obedience of Jesus Christ (2 Cor 10:5).  Your beliefs matter that much.  God cares what you think and believe.

He also cares what your “rulers” think and believe, and their actions don’t have an iota of effect on God’s decrees.  Oh to be sure, that may mean war on your rulers if the oppression becomes severe enough, but it matters whether that is a just war, you see, because you will answer to your maker.

Eternity, and the state of your soul there.  That’s why this is important.  If a piece of paper, honored or not, is the basis for what you do, then you are to be pitied.  But if the basis for what you believe and do is the Holy Writ, God is on your side, and there can be no better place to be, dear reader.

They hate you.  You cannot bargain with them, you cannot compromise with them, you cannot appease them.  They want to control you.  They want you dead.

Work all of your life for wealth that you intend to pass down to your progeny, noted as a good thing by The Lord of the universe (Proverbs 13:22)?  Want to protect your family, home and hearth because that’s what God has ordered you to do?

Too bad.  Contrary to the Biblical notion that sin cannot be ascribed to the innocent, and that sin is NOT collective, the revolutionaries want you in poverty and danger.

The City of Seattle held a racially segregated employee training session aimed at White staffers and instructing them on “undoing your own whiteness” in order to be held accountable by people of color, according to documents obtained by a public records request.

The session took place on June 12, as protesters took part in the so-called “Capitol Hill Organized Protest” in the Capitol Hill district.

One handout distributed in the session reportedly declared how “racism is not our fault but we are responsible.” Another said White staffers must give up “the land” and their “guaranteed physical safety” in order to be an “accomplice” for racial justice.

Do you understand?  Give up your land, give up your safety.  Be in poverty, be raped and be beaten.  Give up your guns, give up your belongings.

I don’t know what the easy thing to do is, but I know what the Godly thing is: never give up your guns, never give up the wealth you intend to pass to your children’s children.  That’s what the “good” man would do.

BLM has made their intentions clear.

A Black Lives Matter leader told Fox News on Wednesday evening that if they are not given what they want then they will “burn down” the system.

Hawk Newsome, head of Black Lives Matter for Greater New York, part of the neo-Marxist Black Lives Matter movement, made the remarks in a combative interview with Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum.

[ … ]

“If this country doesn’t give us what we want then we will burn down the system and replace it,” Newsome responded. “All right. And I could be speaking figuratively, I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation. Like let’s be very real and observe the history of the 1960s. When black people were rioting we have their highest growth and wealth and property ownership.”

People have begun to look to the future and what it may look like.

America faces three scenarios.

• One: Trump is re-elected on a wave of anger over the looting and anarchy unleashed by the “I-Can’t-Breathe” narrative. Trump sends Javanka packing, dispatches the troops to restore order, extends the immigration moratorium, finally builds the wall, and begins mass deportations as the White House protects the dissident Right from deplatforming by the Tech Totalitarians.

That scenario is most likely a fantasy.

[ … ]

• Two: Trump loses, and the Blob and its allies triumph. But because this is a country now and not a nation, with no shared sense of common identity and agreed-upon history, culture, beliefs, or language, only a full-blown police state can hold it together.

Even that might not ensure order in a chaotic post-America, and the diminishing number of whites will surely not enjoy the protection of the state. At some point, white Americans might well be living like white South Africans, ever in fear for their lives.

[ … ]

• Three: The country breaks apart, and the Historic American people establish enclaves for themselves and others who love and fondly remember the old America.

Those scenarios are possible, except for #1.  Actually, #2 could only ever be temporary, as I don’t even believe that a full blown police state could hold it together.  Neither do others, I suspect, as witness the massive gun and ammunition buying spree Americans are currently on.

But burning the system down isn’t something that will happen in the future- it’s already happened.  The fruits of Horace Mann (1796 – 1859) and John Dewey took a long time to ferment, but they did, and their children now self flagellate over “wokeness” and whiteness and imaginary infractions and sins, all the while ignoring the maker of the universe, the only sovereign, and the only potentate who can legitimately demand loyalty and obedience.

The real root of the problem lies not in the current disembowelment, but rather, that it is a replacement religion for the vacuum left by the utter and complete failure of classic Christianity in the West.  True religion, Christianity, was under attack for centuries by German higher criticism and modern philosophy, but actually held fairly strong in America until about the early 20 century.

By that time, the influence of John Darby (1800 – 1882) had begun to be felt, and his acolyte Scofield (1843 – 1921) popularized his ideas.  Mann’s ideas would have had little traction had it not been for a weakened, decimated Christianity that believes that the world is getting worse and worse and worse and Jesus is coming soon, and rather than “take every thought captive” to the claims of Christ, as the Calvinist would say, the job of the Christian is to make converts, cloister and expect the soon release from the hell that the church themselves created by turning their backs on the world.

Rather than be salt and light as commanded, the church turned over science to Darwin, the arts to the pagans in Hollywood, and politics and law to the demons in Washington and their “expert” linguists in the schools of law to teach them how to twist every word ever spoken.  The racists want reparations, or more redistribution of wealth (a colloquial term for theft), the woke mob is even now targeting STEM, and the Marxists want to tear down now just statues, but every vestige of Western history and culture, most especially the church.

America is not going to rupture, it has already ruptured.  The framework had begun to be hatcheted some century or more ago.  The American church is to blame.  “Go forth and make disciples” became “Go forth and snatch brands from the fire before we all get a free ride out of here, and maybe there will be football, beer and brats in heaven.”  The church got one half of it right, but therefore all of it wrong because it missed the “disciples” part of it.

Dispensational, premillennial rapturism neutered American Christians and rendered them pathetic; it is the greatest lie and hoax ever perpetrated on the Christian church.  If you’re looking for a root cause of all of the pain and suffering we are soon to endure, look no further than ourselves.

Via David Codrea, this pitiful understanding of theology and life.

Chick-Fil-A CEO Dan Cathy says it’s time to find strangers and “shine their shoes” to combat racism in the U.S.

The Christian businessman, long reviled by LGBT activists for his support of the traditional definition of marriage, suggested the idea while weighing in on Black Lives Matter protests across the nation.

He made the remarks during a June 14 panel at Passion City Church in Atlanta.

“I invite folks just to put some words to action here and if we need to find somebody that needs to have their shoes shined, we need to just go right on over and shine their shoes,” Mr. Cathy told Christian rapper Lecrae and Passion City Founder Louie Giglio.

“Whether they got tennis shoes on or not — maybe they got sandals on — it really doesn’t matter,” he continued. “But there’s a time in which we need to have some personal action here. Maybe we need to give them a huge too. … I bought about 1,500 of these [shoeshine brushes] and I gave them to all our Chick-Fil-A operators and staff a number of years ago. So any expressions of a contrite heart, of a sense of humility, a sense of shame, a sense of embarrassment begat with an apologetic heart — I think that’s what our world needs to hear today.”

The 70-minute discussion also featured Mr. Cathy urging Americans not to “let this moment pass” or to “point fingers” at looters.

“[We had] about a dozen Chick-fil-A restaurants vandalized in the last week, but my plea would be for the white people, rather than point fingers at that kind of criminal effort, would be to see the level of frustration and exasperation and almost the sense of hopelessness that exists on some of those activists within the African-American community,” he said.

First of all, I would like to take this chance, unequivocally, to point my finger at looters.  That’s called stealing, and it violates the eighth commandment.  The Biblical punishment for that is to become an indentured servant to the offended victim until the debt is paid in multiples.

Now that’s done, let’s reiterate what we’ve discussed before concerning this mistaken notion of collective sin.

” … the Biblical doctrine is, as Deuteronomy 24:16 makes clear, one of individual responsibility … guilt cannot be shifted to others or passed on to the people around a man.  Guilt is non-transferable; a disposition or nature can be inherited, but not guilt.”

Finally, my grandfather barely had an elementary school education.  He fought in WWI, and upon discharge went to work for the railroad.  He broke his back while working, and didn’t miss a day of work because he had a family to support.

His only son and my father, worked hard all of his life to provide for me and my siblings.  The hard work over two generations enabled me to go to school, where I had to work hard to become an engineer.  To be sure, my life is one that exemplifies grace, without which I’m sure I would live in a ditch somewhere.  So I don’t need a sermon from anyone on the effects of grace in my life.

But God uses secondary causes too, and lack of work, slothfulness, is also a sin.  I am not the recipient of any sort of privilege, and I won’t be treated that way by the morally preening but ignorant Dan Cathy, any politician, or any wealth redistributionist.

Those vacuous, second grader level sermonetes by rich people bore me.

NY Times Op Ed.

The Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, says the following: “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.”

Follow the Lord and live.  Follow the NY Times and perish, in time and eternity.  It’s your choice, boys and girls.  But don’t say you weren’t warned.  I’ve done my job.

From a reader, this uneducated pastor.

The white pastor of a large Christian church in Pennsylvania is taking personal blame for “the situation” leading to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and says all white churches are collectively to blame.

“The situation we find ourselves in is my fault, and it is a gospel issue, with the credibility of the gospel on the line,” said Bob Myers, pastor of Covenant Church in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

In his blog post titled, “Is It My Fault?,” Myers cites white privilege among American Christians as a main factor leading to the death of Floyd, who is black. The event has sparked riots and protests in major cities across the United States this weekend.

Now that your mind has been poisoned with stupidity, here is the antidote from R. J. Rushdoony, “Institutes of Biblical Law.”

” … the Biblical doctrine is, as Deuteronomy 24:16 makes clear, one of individual responsibility … guilt cannot be shifted to others or passed on to the people around a man.  Guilt is non-transferable; a disposition or nature can be inherited, but not guilt.”

Mr. Floyd is dead as a result of something, presumably what the cop did to him.  It is therefore not my fault or your fault or the fault of a collective, whomever that might be in your mind.  The ignorant pastor should go back to seminary.

David Codrea.

This is the secular fundamental transformation/cultural terraforming of America that Democrats are counting on for votes and Chamber of Commerce Republicans for cheap labor. It’s also, not coincidentally, the greatest threat to continued legal recognition of the right to keep and bear arms, something none of our state and national “gun rights leaders” has been willing to acknowledge, let alone champion, lest the “national socialists” behind it all smear them as “haters,” too. As if they don’t already.

Those who hold religion in contempt have always been more than happy to exploit religious useful idiots if it advances their agenda. At some point, when they’re no longer needed, useful idiots are then “fundamentally transformed” into useless eaters, right before they’re further “fundamentally transformed” into fertilizer.

Serving man rather than God.  It goes on until they are judged, and that judgment certainly comes in eternity.  More often than not, it occurs in time as well, and that judgment makes no differentiation between the perpetrators and the victims.

Everyone suffers in the wake of God’s corporate judgment on nations.

We’re there.  Seventy million babies.  Legalized theft of family wealth.  Force indoctrination in schools of communist indoctrination.  Foreign wars to enrich bankers and corporations.  Readers can add to the list.

The church is all to blame for not being salt and light in the world, for preaching false doctrine, and for pretending that God doesn’t punish wickedness.

That all has to do with gun control how, you ask?  You didn’t really have to ask.

Courtesy of reader Fred Tippens.

American Thinker has related thoughts.

At the Jacobin, an American socialist, Marxist quarterly based in New York, Ben Burgis emphasizes that

Progressives and democratic socialists need to make the case that there’s a third alternative to business-as-usual centrists running the states Trump wants to ‘liberate’ and the cynical demagogues who want to feed low-income workers to the capitalist death machine by prematurely ending the lockouts

[ … ]

The coronavirus has cleared the field for communists. It is an opportune moment for the left in general, but above all, for those who already wield a certain amount of power and want to perpetuate themselves and implant their totalitarian paradise once and for all.

There is no need to wonder about these things.  Governors are taking power to themselves nowhere granted by any state or the federal constitution; rulers unilaterally declare that worshipers cannot gather; stores are shut down, businesses are closed, some forever; cops, working on taxpayer monies, take the time to enter private property without a warrant to harass and lecture people on allowing their children to play with other children; cops arrest surfers, hikers and campers who have paid for the public land they’re on with taxpayer dollars; the elderly are jailed in their facilities to perish, when the safest thing they could have done with them would have been to send them home, or else roll them out into the sun, taken them for a walk, and given them Vitamins C/D3; workers everywhere are told to wear masks so that they re-breath their own effluent and cause the mask itself to be a contaminant trap on both inside and outside surfaces, contributing to their own retrovirus loading because they can’t properly expel their own air; the FedGov prints money like monopoly paper; and communists everywhere want to see the economy fail.

This is all designed to break the bonds of dependency and love between families and church, cause feelings of isolation, and create dependency on the government.  At its root, it is the wicked desire to control other people.  The tools of control are loneliness, poverty and isolation.  Community becomes government.

R.J. Rushdoony said this.

The mainstream of Western civilization is thus apparent, the desire to control and change others as the essence of true power.  This lust for power, the pathology of all fallen men, is common to cultures all over the world.  It is an expression of man’s original sin, his desire to be as God (“The Death of Meaning”).

Man’s attempt to supplant himself upon the throne of the universe never ends well.

Slapped Roy Cooper around like the punk he is.

A federal judge’s order Saturday allows North Carolina religious leaders to open their doors to their congregations, in spite of the governor’s warning that they risk spreading coronavirus.

Gov. Roy Cooper said he wouldn’t appeal the ruling blocking his restrictions on indoor religious services.

Saturday’s order pointed out that while only up to 10 people are allowed inside for religious services under Cooper’s stay-at-home order, that same standard doesn’t apply to other entities, such as businesses that are limited to 50% capacity, and funeral services, which allow up to 50 people.

“The record, at this admittedly early stage of the case, reveals that the Governor appears to trust citizens to perform non-religious activities indoors (such as shopping or working or selling merchandise) but does not trust them to do the same when they worship together indoors,” states Judge James C. Dever III’s ruling in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina Eastern Division.

The temporary order comes after two Baptist churches, a minister and a Christian revival group filing a lawsuit against the Democratic governor Thursday, saying his executive order violates their First Amendment freedom of religion and other constitutional rights, The News & Observer reported.

A hearing is scheduled May 29 on whether the order will become permanent.

Until that time, the judge’s order prevents Cooper from taking enforcement actions against religious worshipers, but also states they should observe recommendations for social distancing and reduce transmission of the virus when possible.

“The court trusts worshipers and their leaders to look after one another and society while exercising their free exercise rights just as they and their fellow citizens (whether religious or not) do when engaged in non-religious activities,” Dever’s order states.

I hope he sees fit to make it a permanent injunction.  Meanwhile, I suspect that Cooper isn’t challenging this because he knows he’ll lose.