The Epic Fail of Liberal Ethics, or Antinomianism Doesn’t Negate the Law, Snowflake.

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The phrase “liberal ethics” is quite the oxymoron these days, unless one considers that there are good ethics and bad ethics. I will quantify right away that my political and social opinions are generally just to the right of Reagan, so there will be no tree-hugging, mollycoddling, brainless touchy-feely nonsense from me. Good and bad are black and white, and this is the first point on which liberal nonsense fails. Morality is not relative. It came from God in the form of the Ten Commandments. Not the Ten Suggestions, or Ten Things that are Kinda Nice to Try.

This being said, I will give a disclaimer before I am shot down as some crazy Bible-worshiping hag belonging to a Westboro Baptist or worse type church.

I am conservative both socially and politically in regard to the left hand kingdom. My citizenship in the left hand kingdom is necessarily related to and informed by my citizenship the right hand kingdom. If my personal assertions smack of confessional Lutheran theology, that’s completely correct and most intentional. Reader, be then forewarned.

If we remember that the Ten Commandments are God’s Laws- not options, not nice sentiments, we also know, if we are honest with ourselves, that every single one of us breaks every single one of these laws every single day.

Even though the best of us break these laws with impunity, the fact that they are laws doesn’t change. Try to break the natural law of gravity and see how that works. That may help one understand why human beings earn the penalty of death if we are left solely to the judgment of the Law. Save by the grace of God, humanity is completely corrupted and doomed.

pelosi

Crazy politicians are not helping anything. And BTW, she’s anything but Roman Catholic. Molech worshipper, maybe.

Liberal ethics openly defy God’s Law. It is as if they have intentionally taken the Commandments and turned them around into hedonistic, self-serving bromides.

Instead of the First Commandment- You will have no other gods, the liberal command is: Myself, my god. MY body, MY choice, MY entitlement-MY right to never be offended or challenged. The demands of so many screaming, mollycoddled toddlers.

Instead of the Second Commandment- You will not take the Name of the Lord in vain, liberals preach all sorts of false gospels in the name of themselves, and to the cause of obtaining the Almighty Dollar.

Instead of the Third Commandment- Honor the Sabbath Day and keep it holy, we get “all praise to the Almighty Dollar.”

Instead of the Fourth Commandment – Honor your father and mother, legitimate authority that belongs to parents is usurped by the state. Children are indoctrinated with all manner of subversive and dangerous ideologies via public education (that is, if they survive to be born) that turns their hearts and minds to despise their parents and reject sound authority.

Instead of the Fifth Commandment- You shall not kill- liberals celebrate the slaughter of unborn children in the name of “choice.” Except that the individuals being slaughtered were never given a choice.

Instead of the Sixth Commandment- You shall not commit adultery- every sort of sick sexual deviance is celebrated, from serial monogamy, to sodomy, to polyamory, to even pedophilia and zoophilia.

Instead of the Seventh Commandment- You shall not steal- liberals work to “legalize” theft through excessive and oppressive taxation upon the working poor to give resources and money away to illegal immigrants, those unwilling to work, and “protected groups” such as “refugees” from terrorist harboring countries whose aim it is to destroy our nation.

Instead of the Eighth Commandment- You shall not bear false witness– the news networks are alive and corrupt with lies that seek to make deviant lifestyles come across as normal, to demonize those who try to live in an upright manner.

Instead of the Ninth Commandment- You shall not covet your neighbor’s property- the race to acquire property and to have the latest stuff is all the rage- whether it is gotten by legitimate means or not.

Instead of the Tenth Commandment- You shall not covet your neighbor’s spouse, livestock or employees, the media glorifies promiscuity and disloyalty to one’s spouse with TV shows such as “Wife Swap,” and “Temptation Island.” The tabloids are thick with the who’s who of “who is involved with so and so this week.”

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I don’t claim to have the answers for sinful humanity, and I freely admit that I am part of the problem. I don’t follow God’s Law 100%. No one does. No one can. The only thing that knowing the Law can teach me is just how sinful and wicked I really am, and that I desperately need Jesus.

But just because no one can be 100% perfect does not mean that society loses its obligation to maintain order and standards.

Antinomianism- behaving as though there is an absence of law- does not negate the reality of the law. One can deny the law of gravity until one is blue in the face but the reality is that if one jumps off a cliff, no matter one’s view on the law of gravity, the bottom still comes quickly and rocks are still very hard.

This is the fail of liberalism and the fail of liberal ethics. Denying a that there are consequences for breaking a natural law does not make those consequences go away. And I can say that without invoking my faith. Natural laws- and the consequences for breaking them- can be proven by science and logic.

That sort of denial, that there are absolutes and laws that cannot be broken without consequences, only breeds more of the irrational self-glorifying navel gazing that is so prevalent today. The false concept of “multiple genders,” the acceptance of all sorts of mental disorders as being “diversity” and the straight up denial of history are just the beginning. John Calvin had it right about the total depravity of man. It’s too bad that in these days we are seeing it played out.

Evil Must Be Named, Rabid Dogs, and Insanity

terroristHey, you, Terrorist Joe- your freedom of religion ends when your “religion” tells you to kill me.

I’ve been watching the events of the world unfold for the past few weeks (actually I am a more avid observer of current events and of history’s unfolding than I appear to be) and I have a few observations I believe are worth sharing.

Obama Muslim Brotherhood

First of all, Barack Hussein Obama is a joke- a sad, sick and deadly joke, but still a joke.  I’ve known this since 2008 when I saw this ass-clown running for president, and I thought (erroneously, sadly enough) that the American people couldn’t possibly be that stupid.  However, a little creative fixing by the Chicago machine, a complete whitewash (pun intended) of a shady character’s nebulous past, and a lame, senile Republican candidate (remember John McCain?) to run against, and we have the first ever foreign traitor squatting in our White House.  Repeat in 2012 just to make it interesting- all made easier because now there are even more illegals and dead people voting Democrat than ever before. So we are still burdened with this effete, weak, and completely clueless wanna-be dictator squatting in our White House, blithely putting out the welcome mat for every radical Muslim terrorist nut job in the world.

temperance ladiesI bet these girls led some pretty lonely lives.

I freely admit that I am as white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant as the day is long, so I can’t say that I’m an authority on Islam or that I can attest to what ALL Muslims believe.  I freely admit that when I was taking adult Confirmation classes (late 1980s) that our Pastor taught that Islam is a cult and a false religion.  He didn’t go in depth about Islam except to point out that it is a counterfeit, a poor substitute for the truth, and that Muslims deny the divinity of Christ. That being said, obviously they are not Christians.  I can deal with people not being Christian.  I have a good number of friends who claim to be atheist for what it’s worth.

I am not one of those obnoxious individuals who insists that everyone who believes differently than me is going to fry in the eternal fires of hell.  I believe in hell, and that there will be people who end up there, but I generally don’t try to shove my interpretation of Christianity on anyone.  As a confessional Lutheran (as well as someone who pretty much also subscribes to Molinism,) I believe humans are powerless to bring themselves to saving faith.  It’s God Who does the saving.  Now the Holy Spirit can and does work through people, and as a Christian I am supposed to let that happen, but as far as winning hearts… that’s not something I can do- apart from God Himself.

Proverbs

While as a Christian I would be thrilled to see everyone come to saving faith in Christ, in this country one has the right under the First Amendment to worship whoever, or whatever, or nothing at all.  It’s none of my business if you want to bark at the moon, hail Satan, or worship a 1993 Ford Escort- as long as none of that involves pushing your religion off on me, or worse, killing me if I don’t dance around your particular tree.

Isis Crescent Moon

From what I have discerned, Islam was founded upon the visions of a deranged individual (Mohammed) who devised a bastard theology that mixed together the worship of an Arabic moon-god with some elements of Judaism and Christianity, with a little bit of child molestation and bestiality thrown in there for fun. Oh, and let’s not forget how Islam regards and treats women.

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While the burqa would save time on hair styling and makeup, it would make driving a bit awkward.  Walking too.

I don’t care if you really want to believe in the false religion of Islam- or if you want to bark at the moon or pee on trees- that’s your business- until you take it to the point where you believe that you have express permission to kill everyone who doesn’t subscribe to the same ideology.

donald trump

I agree with Donald Trump that people who buy in to the belief system of radical Islam should not be permitted to immigrate to the United States.  As long as there are Islamic terror groups who chant “Death to America” and who think it’s OK to annihilate the “infidels”- and who are doing so with impunity around the world- then they can keep themselves and their belief system back in the third world holes from which they came.

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I don’t understand why people can’t see the parallels between Islamic terror groups and Nazism.  Some will be quick to say that Nazism was a political ideology rather than a religion.  I would be even quicker to say that radical Islam is even more evil as a political ideology because it uses a (false) religion as a smoke screen for its true nihilistic purpose.  All Hitler had to fly on was junk science and fabricated Nordic myths.

Winston Churchill once said that “Islam in a man is like rabies in a dog.”  The sad thing about both rabies and radical Islam is there is no cure for either apart from killing the host organism.

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Radical Islam is an evil, nihilistic force in this world that is fatal (like rabies) and much like Nazism, seeks to spread and kill and destroy anything that contradicts it.  Allowing more of this nihilistic ideology into the United States or any other civilized part of the world is pure idiocy and ignorance.

Where is common sense? Why can’t we call evil what it is?

 

 

 

 

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, and Life is a Limited Time Offer

dead kid on horse

I’m not sure which one(s) is (are) dead in the pic, but I’m pretty sure they all are by now.

It’s Ash Wednesday again- a day to reflect on personal mortality and the myriad imperfections of humanity, so here I am trotting out the postmortem pics collection.  As macabre as it is, I know I’m not the only one who is fascinated with Victorian era postmortem photography.  As for the kid in the above pic, he looks like he’s seen a ghost.  Mom and Dad look pretty much comatose, which is why I can’t tell for sure who’s dead and who’s not.  I’m pretty sure I would have the same expression on my face as the kid if I were required to sit that close to dead people, so that’s another reason why I wonder if the kid, the parents, just one or the other parent, or all three were dead when this pic was taken.   The reality is, now anyway, that they are all dead, unless the kid is 120 or something. Physical death is a 100% probability- it’s going to happen- and it’s just a question of when. 

I could even get into a little Southern Baptist soteriology (even though it’s a bit odd because SB’s don’t observe Ash Wednesday) right about now too.  Turn or burn, baby.  You are gonna be worm food, so now’s your time to Get Right with the Lawd-uh!

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Somehow seeking salvation from a dog and pony show like this seems about as effective as taking driving lessons from Ted Kennedy.

I do like her wig though.  If only it were black.

I have had a rather cynical relationship with organized religion through the years.  When I decided to read the Catechism of the Catholic Church (which many self-proclaimed Catholics have not) I learned that if I am to be intellectually honest with myself and with God there is no way I can claim to be Roman Catholic.   There is some Weird Stuff in there.  I almost joined an SB church because their theology tends to be very black and white.  Saved/not saved, sin/not sin, and so on.  You can know if you’re IN or OUT.  I love the Baptist emphasis on Bible study too- but- for me the big problem with Baptists in general is that they tend to put too much on human free will- such as we “choose” to believe.  I’m here to say that I firmly believe it’s God doing the choosing, and I don’t claim to understand that.

I discovered confessional Lutheranism when I was in college, and of all the interpretations and expressions of Christianity, to me it makes the most sense.  Lutheranism- in its classic sense, is not perfect, but it allows for the grey areas, and allows for intellectual honesty and questions.  There is space for the mystery that is God.  There is understanding for my lack of ability to comprehend.

dead kid with angels

I have a hard time understanding why you would take pics of a dead kid surrounded by paper angels, but it was a different time.

I wish I could believe spiritual things as black and white (and there are some things that are) but I find myself asking way too many questions- questions where I simply have to accept the mystery and be okay that the answer is either something I don’t know or can’t understand.

I’m glad that I’m not the one who makes the vast decisions of the cosmos.  I’m doing good to decide what to wear or what to eat, and grateful to have both clothes and food.

Saints in stained-glass

I’m pretty sure no one is going to want to memorialize me in stained glass.

I have more questions than answers and more failures than successes, but I have to believe there is some reason why I am sucking up valuable oxygen for the time being, whether I get it or not.

(Jesus said:) “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal;  but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:19-21 (NRSV)

Today’s questions would be, “Where is my treasure?  Where is my heart?”

I really have to think about both of those questions today.