As a general rule

Those upset about this in our schools:

Are fine with this in our schools:

And vice versa. Therein lies the division. 

Our very Catholic president speaks

Yep:

In case you're wondering or even care, the Catholic Church technically teaches against IVF.  Just what that means today is open to debate.  Obviously President Biden has expressed his opinion. 

In these changing times

The fourth angel poured his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch men with fire; men were scorched by the fierce heat, and they cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues, and they did not repent and give him glory. The fifth angel poured his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was in darkness; men gnawed their tongues in anguish and cursed the God of heaven for their pain and sores, and did not repent of their deeds.

Revelation 16.8-11

No, I’m not saying global warming is fulfilling Scripture!  Or if you arrange the clues, it proves that political party over there is the Beast!  That’s not the value of Revelation.  As I said here, Revelation was written as Rome was beginning to look toward persecuting Christians as a matter of course.  It was long removed from the days when St. Paul could appeal to Rome to avoid persecution by the Jewish community.  Jewish Christians had long been banished from their communities for following Jesus by the time of Revelation.  Now Rome was emerging as every bit the threat.  

Plus, Rome had been going through some pretty tumultuous times in general.   Then you had the destruction of Jerusalem that some believers thought would usher in the Last Judgement, but didn’t.  Shaky faith, persecution, societal upheaval.  The message of Revelation, no matter how you parse the horns and frogs, is persevere.  Hold on to the Gospel of Christ.  Do not give in, do not surrender, do not receive the mark, stay firm even if everyone around us is receiving the mark and cursing God and you. 

A great many today are abandoning the Faith one way or another.  They’re trying to jettison the world the Church helped build, and change the Church to justify doing so.  They’re watering down the Gospel.  They are throwing down teachings and truths that even common sense, much less divine revelation, declares indisputable.   And those are the ones still going to church each Sunday.  Outside of those a vast number is abandoning the Faith altogether, renouncing the Gospel and God, and joining the prophet and his minions. 

That’s the setting for the call to hold firm.  Not because there is some wonderful rapture that will bail us out of the tough times.  If that were the case, there would be no need to hold firm.  Instead, the message is that no matter how bad it gets – and the cyclical revelations in the book show things get worse, and worse and worse – we must hold firm and that’s that. 

The thing proclaimed in so many churches today bears little resemblance to almost any version of Christianity taught before the 20^th Century.  But there is a remnant, a faithful remnant, and that is as much the target audience of Revelation as anything.  Not that those abandoning the faith or allying with Caesar aren’t invited to repent.  See above.  The statements ‘they did not repent’ are stated with a sense of sadness.  With everything collapsing we could repent and run to God.  Yet so many won’t.  

But those of us who do?  Be inspired and be comforted.  God will not abandon the faithful no matter how many abandon God.  And the increasingly common idea that it won’t matter what we do to God, because God is honor bound to reward us with eternal paradise?  That’s just a backhanded way of cursing and mocking God.

Just some thoughts as we head into Holy Week increasingly aware of our surroundings. 

The fifth bowl

Neither liberal nor Christain

I submit this link from our local Columbus Dispatch.  It's an editorial from several individuals criticizing a state resolution that would allow parents to know what their children are learning in public schools.  The bill would also make sure parents were in on discussions involving their own children and any gender topics.  Whether the bill delves into transgender athletes or bathrooms, I don't know. It might, given the references in the editorial.  

Rather than comment, I simply copied a few parts that jumped out at me.  I bold lettered things that I felt spoke louder than the words used, and underlined phrases that are particularly telling, IMO. 

All of this shows we are dealing with followers of a new, alternate reality; believers in a new universe with little in common with what we ever imagined to be true.  And it is a reality quickly being acted on and mandated in our society by threat or retaliation.  Any negative consequences of this new reality are ignored or dismissed. There is nothing Christian to this, and the below rhetoric shows it is no more liberal or tolerant than it is Christian. 

Click on the link (if you can - subscription usually required) and read the whole thing.  Though I think the below sections speak for themselves (the italicized part was the intro that describes the three authors of the editorial):  

Ben Huelskamp (he/they) is the executive director of LOVEboldly. Hank Osmundson (he/him) is the executive director of Unitarian Universalist Justice Ohio and pastor of Community Engagement at St. John’s UCC in Columbus. Jon Osmundson (he/him) is associate pastor at Hilliard UMC and a father of six, four of whom attend public school

In his official biography on the State Board of Education website, [Brendan] Shea is described in terms of his faith as an “active parishioner in St. Patrick Church,” “the founder and president of the Madison County Right to Life,” and enjoying “Bible study” in his free time.

Shea may read his Bible, but he clearly needs to study it further. Because of people like Shea and their attacks on the LGBTQIA+ community from a perspective called “faith,” Christians have earned a reputation as anti-LGBTQIA+.

However, many Christians believe that a faithful Christian response does not allow for the homophobia and transphobia that Shea’s resolution demonstrates.

A Christian cannot hold a position that educators must out students to their parents based on any identity including sexual orientation and gender identity. [My note: this is key, and a revealing statement that shows exactly what they want]

As Christians, we believe that there is only one Savior [My note: From what, I wonder]. Given Shea’s bold pronouncement that he is a Christian, too, we can only assume that he agrees. Therefore, we are mystified why he and other self-proclaimed Christians are deeming themselves to be the saviors of cisgender children and adults from transgender people run amok, lest we forget the Target restroom uproar of 2016.

To be clear, we are an educator, a parent, theologians, and pastors. We are not scientists, psychologists, or medical doctors. We do, however, trust science. Thus, we feel it is important to point out that the fear-inducing rhetoric concerning the safety of cisgender people if trans people are allowed access to restrooms that match their gender identity is misplaced and false. Just one of the many examples is this 2019 study from Harvard University and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

When Shea next has free time and turns to his Bible, perhaps he will turn to Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:40: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me

A PSA from the American Library Association

*Please read update below

On how to sex up the youngest of these in your rural, small town libraries.  Yep.  Read it here.  Not much to add.  Sexing up our youngest children is already underway and increasingly endorsed by our pagan society. Enough Americans still get the willies, however, that it calls for some help in the endeavor.  But those priests of our pagan nation also know that a vast majority of Americans - Christians included - will turn a blind eye or deny.  That's all they need.  

Exactly where we go from here I don't know.  As I said, paganism, even of a secular variety, is the at-rest position of humanity shorn of the revelation of God. Most modern hipsters imagine paganism means getting to  attend awesome orgies at Stonehenge on the Summer Solstice.  Perhaps.  But it also means much, must more, often with a steep price.  And it's a price the grandchildren of our grandchildren are going to have to pay in this world, and possibly even in the next. 

UPDATE:  Apparently the link above goes nowhere since the article in question has been removed.  That's called getting caught.  I have no doubt that the ALA still intends what it wrote there.  It will simply find a different, slicker way to get the message out.  The modern Left is becoming so bad that such subterfuge and mendacity, denial and hypocrisy have become the stock and store of everything they do.  If you want to read what it said, Rod Dreher wisely copied some of the text down on his blog for all of its cringe inducing glory. 

The end of the Age of Christianity

The Christian Era.  The age of Christianity.  The light side of the dividing line that followed the New Covenant revealed through Jesus Christ. That's what we grew up in.  Or at least we thought we did, not realizing we were witnessing the last breaths of that historical epoch.  I suppose if we were raised in church it never dawned on us that the world would move on past the Christian Era in our lifetimes.  Much less could we imagine that the world would revert to the pre-Christian era values of paganism and heathen gods.  Yet that is what happened.  

Rod Dreher called it in his book The Benedict Option.  Dreher might not be the messenger we need, but his message was loud and clear for a people who missed the memo: We are entering into something the Church has not encountered since the earliest years of its existence.  A pagan world in which paganism once again has the wealth and power and minds and hearts of the masses, and those who follow this first century messiah supposedly born in a stable are the fringe outcasts.  

Granted, it's a secular paganism.  It mostly accepts a very atheistic view of the universe.  That is, reality is matter and that's about it.  Perhaps there are parallel universes or such, and energy fields and all. Maybe there is some core energy field behind it all.  Call it God, Allah, Buddha, or Bill Pullman for that matter.  None of it maters because religions are just fairy stories invited by the ancients in lieu of having science.  If there is some  divine thing, it is as irrelevant as quantum physics is to most of the human population.  If we must personalize it, we do so only to affirm me and otherwise it may stay out of my way. A seductive gospel to be sure.

Which is why it's the one that has swept the West.  What the rest of the world will do with this post-Western, post-Christian society remains to be seen.  When Russia invaded Ukraine we initially said the whole world would rally against this naked display of barbarism and slaughter.  But it hasn't.  China, India, the Middle East, S. America - all are just sitting on the fence at best, likely waiting to see what happens.  I can't help but think that not a few people in the world would be happy to watch the West eat itself. 

Nonetheless, we in the West are so far gone that such a reality check barely registers.  That's because we are dead as the civilization we once were. At this point I would support someone who wants to remove 'In God We Trust' from our money since it's a bold face lie.  Whatever god our nation trusts in today has little to nothing to do with the God revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures, the prophets, Christ and His apostles.  The God who was the default understanding of God until I was old enough to remember holds no more place in our social mindset than the tooth fairy. 

My son accepts the theory that the two World Wars did it in.  First Europe after the First World War, then America after the Second, it was the end of the Christian Era and the beginning of a new, godless, pagan, secular era of self-worship and hubris that would shame the Tower of Babel.  However long ago we trace the roots of this decline, it can't be denied that in the years following WWII, the decline happened like a row of tumbling dominos. 

It's fitting that by the time I was in high school the academic world was pushing to eliminate the designation BC/AD from our timelines.  Of course many Christians instantly complied.  By the time my sons were in public school, not only did their textbooks and resources exclusively use the non-Christian 'BCE/CE (that's Before the Common Era and Common Era), but they were taught exactly what they meant and why it was incumbent upon them to adopt the same designation.

I'll say this, at least the are honest.  Ever day we see the chipping away, if not the demolition, of values, truths, beliefs, virtues and views established by the biblical revelation of God.  Donald McClarey posted a NYT editorial pondering the virtues of cannibalism in light of our modern climate crisis and food shortage.  Abortion is increasingly a badge of honor, not something horrible to be hidden.  And our medical establishments are beginning to warm to the mutilation of youth based on the mental health industry's insistence that a person who says she is Napoleon must mean there is no such thing as an objective Napoleon.  The world of the modern paganism.   

Paganism, I'm convinced, is the at-rest position of the world.  Even a secular brand of paganism.  We invent our gods in our image and proceed afoot.  In paganism, there is no sanctify of life.  Humans exist as food for other humans born into various strata of power and privilege.  Unlike the ancient pagans, however, who could still achieve lofty and honorable accomplishments, we have reduced ourselves to animals in trousers with not much to seek except the latest physical pleasure or self-worshipping proclamation.  We are the privileged ones, able to hate with justification and support the extermination of those not-me types since we're sure such practices will never turn on us, simply because we are better than anyone born before us.  Nothing honorable, much less sensical, about that. 

What the near future holds is anyone's guess.  A growing number of believers are simply throwing off the shackles of the Old Time Religion and finding new and creative ways to do in Rome now that Rome is back.  If they won't lay a sacrifice at the altar of Caesar, they will certainly find ways to party at the ceremony afterwards (from Russ Moore's statement that he couldn't attend a gay wedding, but he would happily attend a gay wedding reception).  No doubt such compromises will suffice for the new paganism - for now.  Down the road the line in the sand will be moved again, and more believers will happily leap accordingly. 

Whether it's because deep down they haven't really believed the Gospel message or not, I don't know. I have a hunch there is less real faith in our pews than we might believe.  Heck, we all know how tough it is to believe when we've lived in a ruthlessly secular state for generations.  I imagine some long ago lost that faith, but since there was no cost for indulging in a fine Sunday fellowship, it was no problem. 

Now, as the new Caesars of the new paganism consolidate control, free believing and free worshipping aren't going to be as easy as it was.  I fear those who cling to that Old Time Historical Gospel will increasingly be the pariahs, the outcasts, the ostracized.  And many of the ones charging forward with rocks ready to stone the dissenters will be those we once sat next to in our pews. 

Why we homeschool

Because I don't want my sons taught that they are second rate citizens who deserve what they get because they are 1) Christian, 2) white, 3) male, 4) heterosexual, 5) American.  That's why.  For instance, the Minneapolis teachers union has negotiated a contract whereby any staffing cuts would cut white-skin teachers before non-white-skin teachers.   A school that treats its staff that way will treat its students that way. 

Yeah.  It's as Jim Crow as Jim Crow.  It's also based on attitudes and agendas fully embraced by our corporate interests, pop culture, education systems, news media and not a few of our religious traditions as well.  Remember, the majority will always follow the easy way. If the easy way is singing God Bless America and waving the flag, then so be it.  If the easy way is labor camps and ghettoes for the undesirables and wrong thinkers, again, so be it. 

Granted, not that Christianity equates to White, but one must understand the real target here.  It's none other than Jesus Christ, as He said it would be.  It's not us that the world hates, it's Him.  The purpose is the destruction of the saving message of the Christian Faith.  The destruction of the civilization it helped build is the most logical, and easiest, approach.  If we have to generate race-hate against those who were the majority ethnic group within this civilization, again, so be it.  That so many willing to do this are themselves white shows it's probably not a desire to punish or retaliate against white people in general that is their main goal.  

Again, the main goal is the destruction of the historical Christian Faith.  The destruction of the Gospel.  The crucifixion of Christ.  It's been done before.  It will be done again.  We're about to learn what it was to live the Gospel in a majority pagan land that sees the Gospel as a threat to its earthly designs. 

"If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you."  John 15.18-19