Free or Licentious Speech?

In response to a youtube video I wrote this:

When people insult certain prophets they then claim the high moral ground while crying "persecution" and other such bleatings when that prophet's followers seek revenge. I now understand that those who provoke such persons in the name of free speech simply do not know the difference between liberty and licentiousness. In this they are rather like the typical run of immature teenagers do not know the difference. So much for the wisdom and liberty of the West

I may likely develop this further

My Old Pastor Speaks

Years ago the pastor of my church  got up and told the congregation that they (I had long since left that church but was told of this by a witness I trust) did not love one another

What are the implications of we Christians not loving one another? They are so crystal clear and so unacceptable to the carnal mind that though I have been declaring them for years I have not really grasped them and have been accused, ignored etc for years, even to the extent of being kicked out of a house church attached to this very  church I speak about here.

I John spells out the implications of lack of love: "He who says he loves God and hates his brother is a liar" "How can you say you love God who you cannot see when you do not love your brother who you can see?" and the clincher "He who does not love (agape) does not know God for God is love."

There it is: if we do not love we do not know God. We are backslidden, walk in the flesh, and we have forsaken Him usually for the Law especially if we are devout and serious about our faith. Moreover all the resolves strategies and efforts to remedy this will not change it one iota. They are symptoms of the lovelessness not its remedies, just as legalism is the very sin it fights not the antithesis. For if we are in the flesh we cannot submit for our minds are set on the flesh. Oh, as believers we can be led to submit but this is by our seeking the Lord the Spirit for as long as it takes. The rest is dead work of the flesh we will love one another when and only when we have been convicted and cleansed of the sins of failing to do so ("He loves much who is forgiven much") and are in a relationship with the Spirit.

This relationship  is EVERYTHING ("Seek ye the kingdom - ie the personal rule of the King- and his righteousness, and all these will be added to you").

Of course my ex pastor showed his complete ignorance of the issue by offering what he did as the solution: "OK let's love, then."  As if we could simply turn it on like a tap and God would help us to do so. But because I have already pointed out what lacking love means this will never happen. That church was in the dark then and may very well still be so, And certainly I know I am in the dark, but am hearing a Voice in said darkness which is calling me to Himself.

But I know that I do not know Him.

So will the average run of church believer  acknowledge that they do not know God? I should not be surprised that they will not for my own constant resisting of conviction of sin from the Holy Spirit I now know to be nothing untypical. So though I am in the relationship  which will bring it to pass  not because I want it but know full well I need it they the average religionist is not, for all his talk to the contrary. We will not admit we do not know Him if our self definitions preclude this, if we think our sincerity is axiomatic, our faith genuine; not if we define being born again as one who does love God; and not if we ignore our fruit, our spontaneous and careless reactions and words; and certainly not if the Holy Spirit does not persuade us who are so self righteous as to think we are doing Him any favours  by our religious activities.

Love? For all our trying, because of it even, this is why the world thinks, rightly, that we are hypocrites

Russian Mysteries I

I have been a Russophile for over forty years now, and a Russian History buff. I have been friendly with the local Russian emigre community  and speak only in the past tense not because of any falling out, but because as is the way of things, I drifted away from my contacts therein. But one of them, name of Ilya, teaches Russian history at the small school attached to the local Orthodox Church, and he told me that my knowledge of the history of his homeland was "good."  I took this as an immense compliment.

Regarding the mysteries I am speaking of  I am only offering my opinion based on what little knowledge, compared perhaps to a trained historian and specialist, I have gathered over the years. This and any companions to it I might feel inclined to offer are opinion piece. The chances are that the truth is lost to history

The first I offer is this: Was Tsar Paul Petrovich the natural son of the one whose patronym he bore, namely Peter III the husband of Sophia of Anhalt Zerbst who later became grand duchess Catherine  Alexeyevna  and then Empress Catherine II?

Many have claimed that he was not as both Catherine and Peter hated each other and the one who became the mad Tsar Paul, so irksome to the Russian nobility that he was murdered in a place coup in 1801, was the son instead of Catherine's lover at the time, who was, if my memory serves correctly one Sergei Saltykov.

But if this is so then the House of Romanov ended in 1762 when Peter III died of Haemorrhoidal
Colic. Of course this cause of death is to me a hilarious irony. He was murdered when Catherine seized the throne, but this was put out as the official story, and a final amusing twist on this story was that when Catherine invited a French philosopher out to visit her in Russia, Diderot, I think, he declined on the grounds that as he himself suffered from piles it would not be safe for him out in Russia. A gracious but fierce rebuke if ever there was one!

Of course the murder of any lawfully ordained monarch is no laughing matter but the historical record can drop some grand ironies from time to time.

So here endeth House Romanov?

Pavel Petrovich resembled his putative father both in looks, unprepossessing, and in character traits, even more unprepossessing, being a military martinet obsessed with trivial detail like the alignment of buttons on a soldiers kit.

But his two parents loathed each other. Peter hated Russia. He regarded his native duchy of Schleswig Holstein as more important to him - he was only heir to the Russian throne as  it was Peter I , the Great\, who started the western practise of marrying off what we call princesses to foreign nobility, in this case one of his  daughters to the Duke of Holstein. Young Karl Peter Ulrich  favoured dolls to real people preferring them while even in bed with his wife. And he once put a mouse on trial for upsetting his toys and hanged it with all military ceremony. Catherine on the other hand made it a point to ingratiate herself with  her Russian surroundings at the court of Elizabeth Petrovna  and inhabitants therein. She embraced Russian culture, was highly intelligent, a patron of the arts, literate, all in  contrast to her boorish boy of a husband.

But I read either in the book Five Empresses by Eugene Anisimov or in a biography of Catherine II by the late  Isabel de Madariaga that a letter was found in archives whereby Catherine II admitted to hardening herself up to do what was repulsive to her and engaged in carnal intercourse with her husband as such was no less than her duty.

Of course this does not prove the issue but in my opinion is satisfactory. But there was on honour in any of it. The son of a father which father  was murdered by agents of his own wife was excluded from power, and he hated Catherine for it with a passion.So on becoming Emperor in 1801 he passed Salic Law forbidding women ever to sit on the Romanov throne. Thus though in the eighteenth century  there was Five Empresses, being four Empresses Regnant and one Empress Regent, Anna Leopoldovna, mother of the baby Ivan VI, the boy whose whose life was unmitigated tragedy. there were none thereafter.

One wonders if Russian history would have been different if Alexei Nikolayevich, son and heir of the Last Tsar of Russia, suffering from haemophilia, could have been passed over for one of his sisters, saving the throne and the nation from 70 years of Bolshevik  horror, if the Salic Law were not in force?

A Lesson in Civics

The waves of protests running through America because of the election of Trump is, though I must it seems spell it out that I am speaking in irony here, a good lesson in civics.

It is increasingly clear that   if they don't like the election result, even if the election was fair in terms of the existing system, they feel - and feeling is the operative word, not reasoned conviction and disciplined action - they feel entitled to shout and scream and carry on like school children and protest. In fact I have just seen a video in which school children were out protesting.

Of course the reason here is plain. They do this is because they, the protesters,  believe  not in democracy but in imposing their will by the ballot box and moreover they have no sense that these are two entirely different things. And this is shown by the outrage: thwarted self will

When we had class elections at primary school in order to teach us about voting and the like we were told  that democracy requires that the voter who did not have his candidate selected must  have sufficient respect for the fact as well as nature of opposing views to accept the result. I was taught this in primary school  more than 45 years ago.

We did not call this "Civics" for my homeland  is New Zealand, a country I have never left in my entire life, but that was the purpose and I for one never forgot it even if those who did pout when their best friend was not elected class captain ignored it at the time.

I do not know what they teach in classes they all "Civics" in the USA these days, but even if they try and instil this notion of  respecting, or at least acquiescing, to  the undesired result , the culture at large has become too selfish, too glutted with the self gratification  of endless entertainments and too narcissistic to pay attention.

They fail to see that this behaviour after an election where  their man, or in this instance, woman,   lost is an even bigger subversion of a democracy they profess to believe in than such things as electoral fraud, silencing  or marginalizing third party candidates, superdelegates, and a whole system so awash with the dirty money of corporations that only the business friendly  are likely to win

But of course real political engagement requires more effort than angry noise making, which is why democracies do not last. It is easier to make some noise, smash some windows, ignite some litter bins and show that we have nothing to express but blind outrage

So they who protest think that Trump is dangerous? This may be. But do you make noises the elites will ignore simply because they are ill mannered? Believe me I have seen the objects of protest deny what we were on about as we were ill mannered. Of course in their depravity they will ignore any protest we make if it is polite and peaceful

If they believe in the political system (and whether it is worth believing in is a separate question) they are to engage in it. Party machines will go corrupt if left alone. The truly committed and engaged must flood the party memberships and agitate from within the machine.  They need to see to it that the system does not select two candidates so noxious as Trump and Clinton again

Unless of course such effort  really is a waste of time and violence leading to frenzied blood letting is all that will come, proving that democracy was only ever an impossible and naïve ideal for man never could govern himself.

But crying like children? If they are that infantilized then the situation may very well the lost already

On Masses for Peace and the like

I was listening to a movement from Benjamin Britten's War Requiem just now, and I remembered that I played in a  concert performance of Karl Jenkins' "L'Homme Arme, a Mass for Peace".

The Title L'Homme Arme" is French and means the Armed Man. There are two applications of this  that I can see. Most certainly, in terms of musical history, early pieces of music, and I mean those of  the medieval and renaissance periods, regularly based works on pre existing compositions. This is the original sense of a parody in that they were all parodies but it  implied no sense of mockery at all. The Armed Man was a French popular song at the time and many composers built masses at time that around that tune. Mr Jenkins is merely adding to this ancient and venerable tradition.

But I suspect that his intention is to contrast the military cast of the tune the Armed Man with his impassioned cry for peace, hence his subtitle and my reason for writing this.

It was a cry for peace, and impassioned one in a work that I found at times  beautiful and deeply moving. I will never forget the Benedictus with its cello solo of pure ecstasy underneath which I poured out all the passion I could at the time with a solid and rich bottom D pedal note.  But to whom was the cry being made?

"God," one might say. But which one? If a God really exists this makes all the difference imaginable; and if there is no God then the very exercise is futile. They are merely crying to the empty ether and no rational answer will ever come. It is or at least should be a truism that people do not become peace loving by hearing music, so serenading the violence is a total waste of effort.

When the religions are theist, by which I mean that the God in question actually involves himself or claim to involve himself in the creation by way of answering prayer requests, - in contrast with what I might call Deist religions - which God is supplicated is crucial. And to try and cover all bases by adulterating a catholic mass with prayers to another God is utter blasphemy.

I mean in this instance the second movement of this Mass for Peace in which a Muslim
Muzzein made his call to prayer, the ritual oration that issues from minarets and their modern equivalents five time a day. I was deeply discomforted and had I the zeal of my convictions I may have walked out. But I did not.

Not only that  but this Mass had no Credo. If Jenkins knew what a mass was he knew what a credo was. But he chose not to incorporate one.

So the Mass was a limp cry of the unbelieving to the empty ether, believing  nothing  it achieved  nothing real other than hoping desperately against hope that something might come of it. And something did, but nothing of real value. Secular modern men might shed a tear or tow and think they are thoroughly good people for being so moved. This was a piece of catharsis which lasted all of a few minutes and would have no bearing on how they lived their lives the next day.

I commented on this work as I know it rather well, having performed it as a musician. But this is what such performance arts "for peace" boil down to.

Some time ago I heard a peace on my concert programme. All I remember was that it had famous rock singers in it. It was some kind of classical rock crossover, not that I necessarily disapprove for the Jenkins was one also. But the only other thing I remember was that it cried to every god imaginable. This was utterly tragic and I dissolved in tears. This I all modern men can do when they seek to get spiritual. It was not a cry for or of hope but, being with no basis in hope at all, an expression of despair masquerading as the contrary

The Britten  Requiem mention of which I started this piece with also committed blasphemy by adding to the text as regards the story, which I am my brethren take to be literal history. When Abraham was told not to sacrifice his son the poet I think it was Wilfrid Owen, took over the narrative "But Abraham would not, and half the seed of Europe perished one by one.

And why are we Christians offended by this? Such antics as this are jeering at the only thing, or only One who will give anyone true peace. But at least we are not obliged to slaughter anyone who blasphemes in this way. Vengeance for that  and all other evil belongs to God and God only and He will repay after He has exhausted, due to the defiant unbelief of men refusing his amnesty, all other avenues.


Everyone wants peace and they pray for it, some even to the Christian God, Himself  but overall no one will acknowledge that not only is war sin but their own combatitive response to violence against them is sin as well. thus they will not repent.

As there is no peace for the wicked, as scripture says, and as righteousness in Christ is the only way to peace they will pray and sing and supplicate in vain.

Not because God has no answer to the thing but because we refuse this and seek peace on our terms, a magical intervention whereby the inner violence of men's hearts is not addressed at all.

If we want peace we seek the only God in Christ, and only through Christ  do we seek Him, and not only that but we seek to repent of our sins  genuinely rather than some token gesture or a dismissive ignoring of the whole business by lame appeals to the "love" of God. There is a love of God but it is through this that He would lead us to repent, and is not a substitute for repentance. Rather this repentance, which gift of grace  I discovered in my darkest extremity years ago and which is still outworking, is the  highest expression of God loving us there is.

But the tragedy of it is that the huge majority will not do so, nor even seek it, for it is written and demonstrably true that "strait - ie small- is the gate and narrow the way ands few there are who find it." And if Christians think they have found this way then let us all realize that few are called many are chosen.

He is rich in mercy to lead all who come to him to repentance but without repentance, which is not luxuriating in fear or guilt, far from it, there is nothing.

Nothing at all but the farce which will continue to play itself out to the bitter end

Why I am not a pacifist

I am not a pacifist. But here are my reasons why.

I am too violent, too fearful, to angry, too easily provoked, too unforgiving.

I lust for vengeance, and this is vengeance I crave not justice for it is not in love that I seek it. I have a cruel streak. If my friends have not seen it it is only because in my fear and pride I have very carefully hidden it.

In short I know myself too well

Scripture is most clear. The anger of men does not work the righteousness of God. When men covet something but have it not they fight wars. I should love my enemies, turn the other cheek and resist not evil.

But of course as a sinner I am incapable of doing these things, especially when I see that my efforts, being repression of the impulse I would oppose, is by that very nature hypocrisy

And of course I do not have the God given right to bear arms that I might blow away any who would rob me or harm me, my family  or my friends. Self defence, as we dare call it,  of this kind is not even remotely biblical. Look at the Sermon on the Mount and see how utterly opposed to human nature, my nature, that it is

The state might indeed have the right to execute criminals - I have no principled objection to the death penalty, only profound concerns about the innocent being murdered by the state due to incorrect verdicts, as happens all too often. But that any state claim to be the policeman of the World as Tsar Nicholas  I first himself up as the Gendarme of Europe from the 1830's onward, is arrogant hypocrisy. No country is so saturated in mercy and justice that it has the right to enforce what it calls morals on any other land

War is sin and the fiction of the just war was invented by that heretic Augustine, falsely in my opinion called "saint" of Hippo, the man so out of touch with his own past which included rank heresy as a Manichaean, that he required state persecution of those who were as he was as a young man.

So I am not a pacifist. Not because the contrary line  of doctrine  is even remotely justified, but because it goes against my own nature, as every commandment of God does. For I will not start from the standpoint that my impulse is right and that all doctrinal cloth must be cut to fit this presumption. If it opposes my own nature and thus exposes my own sin it may very well be true. But I cannot oppose my own nature by brute force of will any longer. Thus knowing what I should be I know that I am not and cannot be what I should be, and even my effort is a blasphemous outrage. So I would fight back like any one else

But pacifism is an ideal and by God's grace, when I have confessed and repented, and only by his grace, will He bestow it on as violent and evil a heart as mine.

And if I ever become spiritual what will I do if attacked by an armed man or some such similar?

I will do what scripture commands, and simply die, moreover, by His grace, I will die well.

But not today.

My sin is too intractable till He act, for this  to happen today

Deep Logic

C S Lewis spoke of a "Deep Magic" in his Narnia stories. I speak of a Deep Logic. The atheist account of scripture is that it is a tissue of priestly lies to control and exploit a gullible population of peasants - and this is true insofar as this has been done for millennia.

But this is abuse, not use, and abuse does not detract from proper use. For digging into the text of the Bible I see this cannot be so as pertaining to the scriptures themselves. The logic of it is something that cannot have been dreamed up by men. It is both beautiful, almost terrifying and awe inspiring. A super intelligence and wisdom lurks within the pages.

As such I have a growing conviction, not yet clear enough to really articulate properly. that the Bible itself is proof of God's being and character, that the Bible is logically self authenticating.

And the only of this is that I only became eligible to even begin to see this after repenting of Protestant Bible worship which abuses the truth of Verbal  Plenary Inspiration of the text to read it with rigidity incapable of drawing logical links within it.

However this conviction of mine is not clear enough for me to be able to articulate further than I have here at this time

Reflections on the subversion of democracy

Every one is commenting on the most recent US presidential election. This is a small part of what I could say on it

Because I never supported either Candidate in the US election (a brief flutter of hope  on the night as it became clear Trump had won notwithstanding) I did not have to justify my emotional conviction by making myself believe that my choice (for I never had one) was in any way a good person, and because I did not have such a choice I did not have to justify to others said choice by presenting the corollaries of my emotional convictions as evidence for my convictions.

To do such is to assume the truth of what one tries to prove which is to argue in a logical circle , the fallacy of "petitio principii" - lit to appeal to the principle, or begging the question. Of course such argument proves absolutely nothing. What stuns me is that intelligent people on both sides, those with degrees and university education, have argued in exactly this way subverting all rules of logic and evidential observation for the sake of emotional passion. Does anyone else see that the hysteria on both  sides, the refusal to rationally consider from the basis of what both candidates said, that THIS is more damaging to the democratic ideal than anything else?

The double standard beggars belief. Clinton supporters denied her gloating, "We came we saw HE DIED," called it opposition propaganda or out of context because they knew full well that as it clearly demonstrated that this woman is a war monger as did her destruction of Libya and her consistently hawkish record., all of which are matters of public record yet which they were too lazy to consult. But while denying her words in this manner they  insisted on  focussing on Trump's "grabbing pussy" talk or his "Mexicans are rapists" talk, or his inciting of violence talk, his offering to pay the legal fees of any who assaulted anyone who dared protest at his rallies.


But Trumpists did the same thing. The Don was "joking" "using rhetoric'- but they all call rhetoric like this  lies  when the other candidate does it -  or he was "taken out of context."  His obscene talk about women  was "locker room talk" etc and more egregiously, they insist that the media spread lies. Not when Trump is  on video saying these things. He did not mean it? This is no defence of the man, for if he really did not mean what he said  his speeches were  a cynical pandering to the redneck vote who clearly believed that Mexicans were rapists  on his cue and voted accordingly

Integrity, intelligence, reason, evidence? Even a consistent application of the standard that "the mouth speaks the fullness of the heart"'and that what a candidate might say would therefore indicate their evil? Forget it.  Even if those who argue such are Christians who profess to believe the quote from the gospels  I just gave, they have thrown away even the attempt to apply the scripture properly and instead will come up with half baked notions that Clinton was the Queen of the Witches or that Trump was chosen of God as Cyrus the Great was chosen for the Jews , forgetting that the promises of the New Covenant are more excellent than such and national protection only really applied to the Jews who have always been under the Old Covenant.

So much for belief in the gospel, when Old Covenant thought is appealed to on one hand, or rank superstition justified by blasphemous appeals to divine revelation on the other.

In the passion of this moment even the highly intelligent became part of the mindless mob. I fear for Western civilization when this becomes the nature of political discourse.

And why do professing Christians do this? Clearly they do not believe  that we are strangers and sojourners on this earth. They do not believe that heaven is our home and that the Kingdom of heaven is not of this world. So they fear like unbelievers  because ultimately they, and I insofar as I still do so, think like unbelievers. These are scriptural quotes, and if any reader calling himself a Christian does not know them he demonstrates my point.

We Christians are the salt of the earth? Not when we surrender to such hysteria as this. We have lost our savour, as well as rejected our Saviour, and risk being thrown out to be trampled  by men

 

A Retort

Some time ago I posted somewhere on some issue that really is not relevant to the point I seek to make here. But one of the replies was pure legalism. My interlocuter said that we do not get to cherry pick which commands to obey as Christianity is not a smorgasbord.

I saw no point in replying to him in the forum is question, but I think a valid point is to be made.

It says in James 2:10  that he who breaks one commandment has broken them all. It thus follows that only the perfectly sinless obey the Law, by which I mean the Moral law, for everyone else, namely sinners like us, simply do not and have not ever obeyed the Law of God.

And if anyone tries to claim that he is sufficiently free of sin to actually do so, well that is to claim perfection where there is none possible, as I John 1:10 says any who says he has no sin is a liar

Indeed Paul the Apostle also said this was the impossible  thing of the Law, and he tried hard enough to fail with specular agony. I also did and failed with years of real torment,

So, if a person does not obey the Law at all either he has cherry picked those commandments  he actually attempts to try - and failed of course - , or he has failed manifestly in all and his consistent legalistic approach  is useless.

Moreover I  assert that even trying to hold the entire Law in conscious thought to attempt to obey any of it is impossible anyway,  for the sheer strain is too much for any carnal mind.

As regards the question of legalism they ask should Christian keep the moral Law. This is a loaded question for the answer is apparently self evident. But to ask the proper question is to get a totally different answer.

This question is do any of us actually in point of fact obey the Law? The answer is NO.

This renders all our talk and all our efforts pointless.

There can only remain the personal relationship with the Spirit of Christ

My safety in Christ as it is now

I now know that I have never believed that God loved anyone, or that if He did it was only conditional on one's keeping of the Law, which I cannot do, so therefore I am excluded.

There is not the slightest value in my asserting propositions just because they are true. Such is not faith but hypocrisy  and it is an effort I can no longer endure let alone practice.  This effort is not holding fast to sound doctrine  as St Paul commands but is in fact a refusal. a self righteous one to boot, to acknowledge the sin of unbelief  whereby we have already forsaken said sound doctrine.

Thus the primacy of the intellect, a doctrine the Puritans built their lives on, is part of the hypocrite's mandate. In repressing my unbelieving heart I stirred up my unbelief to  an unmanageable extent. It is better to confess unbelief than pretend faith, and C S Lewis notwithstanding, pretending to faith is a blasphemous absurdity.

How can I be a Christian then? Not by what I believe but by Who I met that dark night now just over 38 years ago. Indeed without such encounter I hold that no one is a Christian at all, though what the encounter is, the nature of it,  is to be determined by what God knows is needful in every individual person.

And how does the Lord keep me safe, for my sense of safety in Him is slowly but genuinely growing?

He gives me ecstasy in my meditations of the Mysterium Tremendum, the tremendous mystery of His unutterable holiness.

Some 5 years  after I was converted he gave me a revelation of this, as I previously shared here earlier.

Although at this time my terror is coming out, He leads me in one on one counsel to confess to Him that I am in fact terrified - no "confessions of faith" here. Then He leads me to repent of some aspect of the unbelief behind the fear, whatever it suits His purpose to lead me in at that time. This is pure personal relationship between a terrified child and his daddy, or a patient and his counsellor - but God the Spirit is the only counsellor I will ever accept now - and it is  nothing else. I am totally helpless and reliant on His leading in cleansing.

My safety is that He is Holy and Terrible. This is not fear but Awe. And if I must tell Him that the notion that loving Him is utter nonsense or that He loves anything  but Himself is pure wishful thinking, so be it. Such as this must be confessed, for if not, and it is in you, it will destroy your faith as it nearly destroyed mine.

But I am drawn by the Tremendous Mystery  of the Holy and Terrible. the one thing I have always listened to. If I could admit to it I have discovered  by experience and relationship  His gentleness  patience and kindness, but that I cannot bring my self to do. Not yet, at least.

So though unbelieving I am relatively safe.

This work, though provisional, being a stepping stone to a further goal, is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in my eyes

Subverted Scriptures 4

"Be angry but do not sin"  Ephesians 4:26 is subverted by being taken out of context, which in this instance is the broader context of scripture as a whole  given that other passages on the subject of wrath are scattered throughout the Bible.

The implication taken from this verse read alone, and I have been told this  by those subverting the verse in the very manner I am writing about here, is that anger is not sin.

This is usually untrue. The Sermon on the Mount is most clear

He who is angry at his brother is a murderer, and elsewhere it is written that the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God. Likewise is wrath listed as one of the fruits of the flesh.

Of course they are keen to subvert the scripture here in order to justify their own anger. But it is not an anger in love for it is not an anger for those who do evil such that they earnestly long for their reconciliation to God and their restoration, even though many will tell bare faced lies concerning their own motive here. For the anger of man requires vengeance first, while for the wrath of God, longsuffering, that is to say patient, anger is the last resort.

Indeed even when as an unbeliever I was under wrath of God  the Holy Spirit himself reached down in love  to save me one dark night almost exactly 38 years ago. This is not the anger of men

There is righteous anger but one must be spiritual to be righteously angry.

And the fruit of the Spirit I have never seen in any living person, Oh, I know some Christian who would count as commonly decent, but as Jesus said if you love those who love you, which is te basic meaning of the term common decency,  there is no merit in it.

(I will return later to provide biblical references for the quotes made here)

Being a good person: the unplatable truth of human nature

The way it goes and I have seen certain questions become litmus tests for this very thing, is that if one wants to show oneself to be a good person then one either seeks to love something, which is difficult for it requires commitment, a love in fact, and effort and even what may be called sacrifice; or one finds something evil to hate. This latter is much easier and I see it time and time again, I have even done it myself. But as scripture says our righteousness is filthy rags, in other words it simply does not count, for it is self righteousness. Righteous anger is not what evil you are angry at but how you are angry at it, otherwise the destructive raping and murdering anger of the Soviet armies as they plunged into Germany at the end of World War II was righteous. Think so? I assuredly do not, and feel it necessary to regard the view I hold here as the only  alternative to such I can find.

When Social Justice Warriors go berserk at an evil, even a real and manifest evil, and riot, throw tantrums, or a preacher rants about executing homosexuals simply because of an out of context misuse of a  verse in the Law of God, we see, independent of any objective truth about the evil, an evil response.

Righteous anger, I assert, is angry not  at the evil doer so much as is  angry for them, deeply desiring their restoration, where human anger simply wants heads to roll in order to make the bad go away for the convenience of the angry person. Hence virtually all the demonstrations against evil I have witnessed over the years, from those against football matches with an apartheid nation, as in 1981, one of which I saw as  a student then, to those for or against homosexuality or abortion are all the anger of men which does not work the righteousness of God (James 1:20), for   even when the issue has no personal connection with the protester, it has become a litmus test for goodness  but it is pointless, being a shibboleth to identify friend from foe not an expression of loving one's enemies

It is a bitter irony that the only people who say that man is evil are great saints, and I know none, or misanthropes, which I have been. However I suspect that misanthropes are embittered because they see perhaps only dimly, but it seems to me clearer than most, what they cannot accept

But as the Spirit leads me to repent of further man pleasing and idolatry I will come to accept what I begin to see, namely that as I am evil I do not need to conjure up a hatred of evil which is self righteousness, nor hold certain positions on certainly litmus questions in order to be seen as good by pothers, nor force good works which are invalidated as good works by their motives (see I Corinthians 13).

That my righteous is filthy rags is unpalatable to all of us. But being honest about it as well as seeking the Lord the Spirit concerning it makes for a much easier life and will contribute to gaining the peace  which surpasses all understanding

Greens and Global Warming

I used to be mildly sympathetic to the ideas of the Green party. But no longer.

I researched Global Warming, now called Climate Change in tacit acknowledgement that the climate has stopped warming for if it were still warming the term global warming would still suffice. I came to the  conclusion that climate operates according to its own immutable laws and human activity is not connected to it in any significant way.

Indeed, for example, in the Medieval Warm period, which was warmer than today, CO2 levels were much lower. In fact you may not have heard of this period of history as the warmists have committed the contemptible fraud of denying it ever happened. But I know it is real  from my reading of history not from gazing at tree ring proxies. Why, I might add, would they have to propound this lie, for a lie it is, if they were speaking the truth? For that alone I might reject their claims as being based on lies. But the fact of the Medieval Warm Period destroys the connection on which the hysteria, and it is hysteria, is based.

Science is a human activity and as such is not immune form politics and fashion. Indeed I totally deplore the fact that too many people get their convictions on this matter from their politics and not from the science, with, in general,  leftists believing in Global Warming and rightists denying it.

I am an exception, and there are a few of us. I am a life long leftist who rejects the claim of man made global warming because of the science and evidence, both historical and empirical, and not from  my politics or any vague sense of leftist guilt

Given that global warming has ceased and was not caused by men, and given that the science saying so is valid despite the cries of those opposed to it, given all these things I have lost all respect for the so called Greens. Green does not mean a party that respects human life or people because after all the Nazis were green. They were even anti smoking long before anyone else . Green is an agrarian fantasy which conveniently overlooks the lives of those who lived in pre industrial societies which were nasty, brutal and short. Indeed the earth can only support the population it now has because of industrial and post industrial technology. This Malthus was dimly aware of when he predicted doom without knowing what industry and science could do. Agrarians must necessarily want to reduce the population by 90 percent, back to a level that is "sustainable" in agrarian terms.

So, as one critic said, they are melons: green on the outside red on the inside, or they are green as they are too yellow to call themselves red.

And now to what  moved me to post this. In my own country  the Labour Party, which I have supported with carrying degrees of commitment all my life, has made an alliance with the NZ Green Party. I deplore the NZ Labour party wanting to get into bed with such dangerous dreamers just as I deplore the self righteousness of the Green saying that those who care for the environment must therefore green. I deplore the big polluters as much as they do but their "solution " is ham fisted

Why do I take them to be genocidal as well as fantasists? The technologies touted by them are inefficient. They deplore fracking and despise nuclear technology, which is,  like it or not the only way to produce cheap energy in abundance. And note: the increase in lifespan noted over the last two centuries can be directly linked to the increase in energy production. So they must therefore, if at all consistent or well thought out - though to be fair they probably are neither of these things-  want to reduce the population by a great amount. Think about it. Do you want to return to the medieval period. a peasant in a mud hut dead before the age of 40 like our ancestors who lived green?

Diverting resources from real need to solve a bogus problem will itself kill people, just as I hear that the price of food has skyrocketed as farmers are rushing to grow bio fuels.

Sense must prevail otherwise seeking to avoid an imaginary disaster may produce a real disaster albeit it of as different kind.

Preachers and History I

Over the years I have heard many preachers appeal to history, both church and world history. As a history buff who really should have trained as a historian, I am not impressed. All too often their appeals are to justify a denominational prejudice or theological bandwagon.

For example, the Seventh Day Adventists have made up their mind that the Pope is the Antichrist. But as of course there has been more than one pope over the centuries they have to cut their cloth to fit their presumption. Thus to them the Beast is a system and an office, not a man.  How do they make this work? As always a good knowledge of scripture is required, but one that is resourceful, economical with truth and with no regard for historical fact or biblical context. 1260 days in prophecy is literally 1260 days but to cover a hatred such as theirs a period that  spans a millennium or more is requisite. So 1260 days becomes 1260 years and the fatal wound of prophecy becomes not a man literally rising from the dead but an institution losing temporal power . So they decide that the capture of the pope in 1798 by French Revolutionary forces will do. Then they work back 1260 years arriving at 538. The pope at the time was Vigilius. They claim that he received his power from the Emperor Justinian (though some preachers are so grossly incompetent as to not be able to get that one right) so Justinian was the dragon mentioned in scripture. But Vigilius was not favoured by his emperor. He in fact spent time in prison at the ire of Justinian for he would not compromise over a doctrinal issue concerning Monophysitism where the Emperor was desperate to keep the Eastern provinces in his Empire quiet by pleasing them where the were largely Monophysite

However such details matter not to the doctrinaire hater, so they invent an all powerful papacy But such is easily refuted

And this is done by refuting the claim that the popes had absolute power from 538 to 1798. The House of Theophylact.   is one such case. Its most notorious member was Marozia, daughter of Theophylact, Senator of Rome who was at the height of her power in 931. She was mother grandmother and great grandmother of popes, and she and her daughter held the papacy in her gift. The popes were pawns. The rule of these women was called the pornocracy (rule of whores) . But polemical catholic haters have never heard of this. It suits them to have an all powerful papacy as proof it is the Beast of Revelation. But this was not the only instance of papal impotence. When , after Boniface VIII claimed to be King of all the Earth (Unam Sanctam, 1302) the King of France showed his awe struck compliance by deporting the popes to Avignon (now southern France where he could keep an eye on them) for the next 70 years - 1309-78. they were puppets of the French King.

That Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV was made to submit to a pope at the village of Canossa in 1077 is taken as proof of papal power. But context determines all. Henry got his revenge some time later when it was politically expedient. Papal victory was not lasting. Neither was papal power.

Facts like these, ignored by polemicists, is why I no longer trust any preacher who claims he is speaking from history. If his lies are egregious and obviously so I write him off as a man of God. If his speech is better than that I will check it. But I have learned that as Christian men are not honest men one should never give unqualified assent to any preacher on this subject (history) ever again, nor, actually, if sola scriptura is true, should we be uncritical about any preacher on any subject at all, for it never ceased to be the case that we should test all things.

There are other issues where preachers show ignorance of history thus ignorance of truth. I may continue this as a short series

Christian values?

This is in reply to a Conservative website. Conservatives, whose thought exemplifies the "love of money [which] is the root of all sorts of evil", and also "the deceitfulness of riches" whereby the conscience is depraved (both are Biblical quotes) are fond of saying that Western Culture is built on Christian principles. This is arrant and arrogant nonsense. Since when was the West EVER built on love mercy and forgiveness? It never was. Stern moralism was ever the core of societies as diverse as Confucian China and even Aztec America where children were expected to be obedient to parents. People spouting such nonsense as I refer to above know neither their Bibles nor history for moralism alone is not Christian, not when it is common throughout the world, and the distinctive Christian value which makes the difference is not in evidence in any public square

(more may follow)