Religion Under Assault in America

 

A couple of hundreds of some of the most prominent Christian leaders in the United States who came from across all denominations came together in Nashville, Tennessee where they signed a missive called the “Nashville Statement.” They conveyed their total support for the New Testament reaffirming over two millennia of Biblical injunctions and directives declaring the reaffirmation that marriage is between one man and one woman, G0d made us male and female and therefore transgenderism is incompatible with the Christian faith, and that the Bible lists homosexuality as a sin thereby rendering its acceptance as incompatible with the Christian faith. This drew many denunciations from among which the condemnation by the Mayor of Nashville, Megan Barry, seemed unexpected. The most preposterous condemnation came from those who objected to the timing coming as the people of Houston and surrounding areas of Texas are suffering from Hurricane Harvey. I’m sure when these leaders of faith planned their assembling months ago they did it with the divine providing them with information that a hurricane would have devastated a large area of the southern United States and this was included in their plans. Please, give the world a break and please, if you are going to object, please find something more believable and applicable, something more real than attempting to shame them for a natural disaster coinciding as if such could be planned. But these were the least of the objections and the least damning as well.

 

When the content of the “Nashville Statement” was officially released, there were numerous condemnations denouncing the signatories as hateful, homophobic, as well as deceitful and not speaking in the nature or with the passions of Jesus. The word “hate” appeared to be the favorite uncivil invective thrown with obvious intent to harm the signers. But not to worry, keepers of the faith in all ages share one remarkable quality, their ability to shrug off scorn over their treasured beliefs as they often have experienced far too much practice allowing such to pass without taking offense. Their skin has developed a tender strength allowing them to be sympathetic and to understand that the people are defending their pet political beliefs and, they hope, not their deep moral beliefs. Religious people have come under more and more rejection for their beliefs which is regrettable as they mostly are the ones least likely to reject those who show them disregard. Religious faith is supposed to allow for people to come together but in this instance, it appears to have had the opposite effect. For that reason, despite my not being anywhere near an expert on the New Testament or, unfortunately, the Torah and remainder of what is referred to as the Old Testament, I wish to contest one of the reported points and make a distinction as a matter of mending fences.

 

Hebrew Bible and Christian Bible

 

The accusation made that they stated that the Bible lists homosexuality as a sin has to be inaccurate. If my knowledge is near accurate, the Bible states that sodomy is a sin, not homosexuality. One may love whomever they choose but the act of sodomy, whether performed between two men and by a man with a woman are equally a sin as both are sodomy. The Bible teaches us not to hate anyone else but to love everybody. We are to love the person and hate the sin, and that makes a huge difference as we are instructed to love the person including homosexuals and to hate the sin of sodomy no matter whether it is homosexual or heterosexual in nature. Unfortunately, the fact is that the act is the sin, not the emotions between people, which are to be judged. But this is lost in the arguments because if an act which can be either heterosexual or homosexual in nature, thus applicable to all men and not just those attracted to other men, then the argument loses all its political clout. What good is the naming of an act as a sin which has no political application when one can make a political stand claiming that religious people hate a certain group of people. One of the major problems with society today is that a certain group of political positions have decided that religion is their enemy and that if their visions of the world are to come true, then the first step is to rid the world of religious beliefs.

 

The absolute worst result from the “Nashville Statement” would be its use in the political war against religion and to attack and besmirch people of religious faith. The war against religion is simply a manufactured war being used as a ploy to attract disaffected people to a certain political viewpoint. Those of the viewpoint that the state must replace religion because religion ties people to a false premise and the state can be and is better suited to caring for people, are ignoring the benefits which came from religion as the force responsible for caring for those in need and the government taking care of the structures such as roads and other inanimate objects. The war against religion desires to claim that man has no divine spark and is no different than an amoeba, just a few million years more evolved which permits eugenics and other forms of population control and the classification of people instead of treating all people with respect and love. The war against religion would reduce humanity to cold calculations and nothing more and that would be a sad world in which to live. But that is exactly how the cold of heart will interpret the “Nashville Statement” and make nothing more of it than claiming it comes from those who hate, but the real question one need answer is who are the real haters, the ones who wish to turn humanity into nothing more than statistics in a government ledger. When one has that answer, then they will understand which respects and treasures people more, the political or the religious. I know which group we would trust our future to between the two.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

But it is All Relative These Days

 

What if I told you that a one dollar bill and a hundred dollar bill were all the same? You would likely call to arrange psychological help for me for my own good thinking I had a screw loose or you might try to trade as many one dollar bills for any hundred dollar bills I might have. But the reality is that the difference is all relative, the hundred dollar bill is worth, relatively, one-hundred one dollar bills. How about something a little less obvious for our second try? What if I told you there really is no difference between worshiping G-d and worshiping the Devil and that the two have basically equal effect on our society as you do all of your worship alone or with fellow worshipers thus it really does not matter. Again, it is all relative. Let us try that there is actually little difference between same sex marriages and hetero-gendered marriages. It is basically the same, relatively. Or what if we claim that a person should be permitted to behave as whatever gender they feel they are and that whatever biological gender they are born is of no real consequence because it is all about being comfortable with your identity. Further, we have to accept that people who believe they were born the wrong gender must be permitted to use the bathroom of the gender they choose to be and not the one their birth gender dictates because, once again, it is all about their being comfortable with their choices. What does it matter to you if some woman believes they’re a man and use the men’s room or a man who believes they should have been born a woman uses the women’s room? It is all relative and no business of anybody else and who are any of us to decide what is normal and right. To make any deal of such things just proves how narrow minded so many people in our society happen to be and it is a kind of gender-fascism to deny these people the right to act as they choose. We all need to adjust and make room for people of choice, for that is what these people are, people of choice. And who’s to say if they might choose tomorrow to be their birth gender for a couple of hours and then switch back and forth depending on their mood every morning, it’s none of our business, right? These are the latest demands the progressive gender police are now demanding, whatever anyone chooses, gay, straight or bi-sexual, male as female or female as male or one who likes to be both by the whim of the moment and any other gender, racial, nationality, religion or whatever else is selectable, we must all simply accept whatever we are presented with as a choice and ignore the facts right in front of us. Nothing is beyond the norm and there is no normal any longer and those who decide the right and wrong of everything are insisting that we just get used to it and learn to live with these new realities.

 

Well, pardon me but I am having just a little more difficulty with these demands as they continue to get more and more ridiculous. I was able to accept the sexual preference with the ever-growing sexual deviances which I believe are somewhere around LGBTQ and perhaps tonight there will be a couple more letters added before dawn. That was all something which we all might be capable of living with as it had little to do with our everyday lives and it never hurts being polite and unquestioning and accepting people as they were in their private life. But things could not be left like this and instead things, as usual, had to be pressed further and further. Many people, and probably rightfully so, got all bent out of shape about the anybody can use whatever bathroom they feel like using simply because that is how they feel that moment. This means that some three-hundred-seventy-seven-pound man can feel dainty some morning so he can just cruise on into the local gym and use the women’s locker-room and shower with the ladies, no problem, because that is just how he feels that morning. OK, so that is the example everyone uses. Let us try a different one. Your sixteen-year-old daughter has a fight with her boyfriend and in a fit of pique, she decides she will get him good so she decides to be a boy today and goes to gym with the boys and bares it all in the shower just because she felt rejected. That is a little different, isn’t it? But it was her right to choose and we are not supposed to question these things. That bring us to the question, how in all that is unholy did things get this absolutely bat crazy? Whose idea was all of this and why did society allow this to get where it is? The answer is anything but friendly because the reason is ourselves. Some of this was the mainline story in the recent PBS special event titled “Real Boy” about a female who desired to be a boy and how we must support those we know who might have such thoughts. Reason with them, counseling them, anything other than total support for their delusions are all but a criminal act punishable by societal casting one out.

 

PBS “Real Boy”

 

We the people have been asleep far too long. While we were complacent, another word for asleep, those whose desire to change our entire civilization and leave nothing which has been valued by the culture most of us live with and only desires to continue living with, but that was not good enough for these people. They have some design where they wish to take our society which required the destruction of all the world held holy. These people have this hatred for the history and the morality it carried with it. Their hatred includes all that aligned with Judeo-Christianity. I know that a number of my readers are rolling their eyes saying here we go again. Well, unfortunately, a little and only as much as necessary. It is not us who are the problem, but the people whose desire is to transform the society because they despise everything which normal members of society stands for and they insist that everything must go. They have ever since been holding a fire sale where all morals must go and be replaced with an any and every thing goes society simply because that is what they demand. Where did they get the standards for their “new morality,” you inquire. Well, let me take a guess here. I think it might have been in their anthropology course on ancient societal norms and religious rites. They were likely fond of the freedom allowed by these ancient idolatrous societies and perhaps became enamored by the entirety of the lifestyle.

 

Whatever, perhaps it was the professors who decided that they wanted to have this and put an end to the tyranny of the Church. That was the wording I remember from the comparative societal evolution course or some other garbage. I was a mathematics major and needed what I thought was an easy elective to boost my GPA. Well, the course was easy enough once I realized all I had to do was compromise every principle of normalcy and repeat the mantra that modern religious morality was the worst development of humankind which ruined everything good that the world had going. Free love and the ability to use human sacrifice to get rid of anybody who was not with the program was the theme of the course. The professor really believed that Christianity was an evil and that G-d was a corrupt concept and that morality was a choke collar placed there by the first pope and it needed to be removed and this could be performed through societal revolution. What was frightening was the number of students who lapped up every word of how the natural state of humankind was hedonism with as few rules as possible, and with people like the professor in charge. The problem is now those students are the professors and they are stoking a revolution and it is traveling at light speed and invading Western society. This is not the first generation to try and replace Judeo-Christian society with barbarism; there were many previous attempts through the ages. One such person can be seen stating this obvious idea that humankind was not supposed to live morally but free from morals and this man was going to free humankind from Jewish conscience and Christian morality (see video below).

 

 

Yes, that was kind of unexpected by many, but this is the ideals that too many of the social science professors are pushing to their charges in those colleges and universities which parents are spiting out and wasting ten upon tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars so their innocent children can become productive members of society. Instead they are being indoctrinated to be revolutionaries who are going to change society and return humankind to their proper place freed from the new immorality, normalcy. They are being taught that everything which was right and proper for their parents’ generation is wrong and that they are to be the new societal leaders and are to bring the new morality to the people. They are to be the liberators freeing humankind from false prophets and the immoral conscience which has burdened Western society for the last two-thousand years. They are being told that the wave of the new normal has made great strides in the past fifty years and that now is their time to finish what their predecessors, their professors have started. This is the propaganda which has been the food for thought in far too many college and university classrooms in the humanities and soft-sciences. Where this will eventually end up is anybody’s guess. The truth is that all the gains made by society since Abraham broke the idols in his families’ store before leaving his homeland and moving to what would become the Promised Land are being destroyed by those who are driving with all the thought and tools at their disposal to return humankind to the worship of Baal. Where will it end?

 

Beyond the Cusp