The Most Hated Sin

There is an old dictum that the sin most hated by a preacher is the one he is most beset with

I know a preacher who is obsessed with homosexuality and atheism. Why would he be if he were not busily repressing these things  in himself out of  his own guilt and fear?  He is also so afraid of the occult that he forces himself to bypass the daily horoscope he told me he sees in the daily newspaper. That is to say he takes such nonsense seriously, so is in fact some kind of occultist.

He is also very cruel,. a bully who thinks he has the right to terrorize people into conversion.  He has said so while preaching in my own hearing. But he does not believe his cruelty is sin, so he does not hate it

The point is that if one hates a sin one does not have to practice that sin to be a sinner in that area. To repress it is to still be it.

How do I know these things  to be true?

I have hated hypocrisy all my life. But I am a legalist.

Therefore I am a master hypocrite.

And I have hated cruelty all my life. But I nurse the most vicious vengeance fantasies  against those who have wronged me. So I know myslf to have a very, very nasty cruel streak, to in fact be a cruel person. I am repressed, of course, and so  a hypocrite, for that is what repression is, and I have been doing it for over 50 years now.

However I am terrified but have no regard for what is called courage, it being a species of legalist hypocrisy. So cowardice does not really bother me.

It might be retorted that scripture requires hatred of sin. I fully agree. So it does.  But carnal men cannot produce this. Our hatred of sin is not righteous, for our righteousness is filthy rags  even as regrads our hatred of evil.

God is having mercy on me for these but he is not aiding and never has nor will aid my efforts in dealing with it.

But that is for another post

Brevity the Soul of Wit

Years ago I  knew my subject, or thought i did, sufficiently that i could talk for hours on it.

Now it is my hope or at least my prayer and aspiration that I understand my subject sufficiently well that I only need talk for minutes

I came to this conclusion after seeing a video of a world famous apologist answering a question during a Q&A period . I thought of that famous quote  to Mozart by the Hapsburg Emperor Joseph II, one of the few things the movie Amadeus actually got right.

His Imperial and Apostolic Majesty said to Mozart,  "very good, sir but far too many notes."

I would say to this apologist  if firstly I could contact him and secondly if I thought he would heed it

"very good sir, but far too many words."

Brevity is still the soul of wit and many words mask incomprehension of the sdubject all too often, or mask the arrogance of loquacity

Removed to draft.

Yesterday i wrote a post  as another summary on what legalism is. But i was full of fury in writing it, so i feel it requires  editing. I do not change my mind on what I said but my expressoin thereof leaves much to be desired. So I have removed it from my published posts, an option this blog site offers.

It will be up again in a revised form at some time in the future

The [Political] Honeymoon is Over

Last year the leader of the New Zealand Labour Party was a colourless nonentity by the name of Andrew Little. Before the last election he and his associates knew this and Labour's pollings were very low.

 So he stepped down and gave  eleadership to his deputy, a strikingly pretty woman named Jacinda Ardern.

The figures immediately surged.

I was not impresed at the time, late last year. It was clear that her policies were not in play  as regards the popularity surge, only either  that she had a pretty face or those irrationally addicted to Identity Politics thought a woman as PM made a  difference when the rule of female Prime Ministers the world over has shown that it does not.

Then came the election.

Incidentally I was not going to vote, having posted on this blog that I am moving to an apolitical stance  as politics is about the art of the possible as, by my amendation of Bismarck's famous quote to this effect,   practised by the contemptible. Politics is a filthy game and to call its practitoners "honourable" as is done in my country is an insult to language

For  some years I supported our new electoral system, Mixed Member Proportional Representation. The reader can google the term to find out how it works. I now hold that it was widely popular as the antics of politicainas were getting on everyone's nerves and it was an irrational reaction to dump the system rather than dump the clowns who were so acting. But at the time, in the early to mid 90's, I was a Labour party activist,  an actively  canvassing door knocker, believe it or not, highly, for me at least, politicized; and I insisted that if it were not proportional it was not representative. My older self would retort to that young fool  if such could be done that none of it is representative, proportional or othertwise, as democracy is merely a fiction as politicians obey their paymsters not their constitutents.

The thing is our right wing party got more votes than the Labour party - our notionally left wing party which has still not repented of its total betrayal of its own principles back in 1984.

But under MMP one of the minor parties  held the balance of power and was able to , or rather its leader, Winston Peters of New Zealand First, was able to select the government by choosing which of the two major parties he would ally himself to. Rather than doing what one would expect to be the decent thing and ally with the biggest party on election night, the right Wwng National Party, he chose, after weeks of holding the country to ramsome, the Labour Party. Some 20 years ago he had allied with the National Party  under the results of the first MMP election,  after a simlar long delay, but I suspect that bad blood lingers there between  the two of them now.

Thus, while I have loathed Right Wing politics all my life, it leaves a sour  taste in my mouth that  the right wing party was excluded  not by populart vote but by whoring and horsetrading  behind closed doors in what are now smoke free rooms . I do not rejoice that a party I loathe is ousted by such dirty means; and I do not approve those who approve said dirty means as long as by them  the Nats are out  of power. If the Left is no better than the Right what difference does it make? They only peddle different forms of filth

So a person whose pretty face caused Labour's  popularity to surge, for it was an immediate surge, not the result of a carefully considered study of her personal record, policy acts or decisions, was selected as our prime minister, by the grace of a minor player who fancies hmself a Kingmaker, and this because of the vagaries of a system itself chosen in reaction to the corruption and stupidity of politicians over 20 years ago.

As a historical aside I ask should I at least hanker for the return of the fate of failed King makers? Google the name Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick,  The King Maker and read of his  end

Now I have no idea whether Jacinda Ardern is capable or not,  but I stand by my reasons as to why I think she caused a populartity surge and was selected - not elected - as  PM.

And now for my purpose in posting here. A recent scandal has broken whereby the honeynmoon between the country and her - and then, I venture,  her party - is now over.

It seems it is not only church groups that have rural youth camps. The Labour Party had one some time ago. Alcohol was freely available to its teenage particicants - itself a criminal offence in my country. If the allegations are to be taken at face value some drunk teen girls were indecently assaulted by a predatory young male of 20.  It is not my purpose here to wonder if the allegations should be taken at face value, rather to comment on the political response to the whole issue

The incident was not reported to police, though as we are not a rape culture such things are indeed illegal here, neither  was it reported to the partents of the children so assaulted  - and they were children, let us not pretend otherwise; and to all appearances, the nub of the scandal, they tried to hush it up, or in a darker term for the same thing  they instituted a a coverup.

Of course the news got out. The honeymoon is over. The Party has taken a hit.

And Ardern's response?

full politlcal speak, saying nithing but appearingt to acknowlewge real responsiblity,

She said among other things "mistakes were made"

note the impersonal and passive voice.

Not "we messed up" or some active  personal use of words whereby I or we did something,  but the passive voice,  as if mistakes simply fall from the skies.

She is distancing herself by her very use of words.

She has learned the poltical game well and is on the way to becoming as filthy as her predecessors.
She may never take a bribe in her career. She may never outright lie to the House. But this shows corruption in the proper sense whereby it should be viewed, that is to say in the broadest possible sense.

It is absurd to join a corrupt sytem to attempt to reform it from within, for as the Bible says bad company corrupts good morals. And I value what little integrity that remains to me at my age after a lifetime of sin to want to throw it away by trying

So my move to an apolitical stance continues as my contempt for the Left grows to equal that I have always had for the Right.

"You follow Me," He said, "Let the dead vote for the dead or quarrel with the dead"

Always this is the best advice ever offered