The Way Madmen Speak

“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

Barack Obama

Only a madman, one might think, would dare to speak of changing the entire milieu — “building a new society” — or even to speak as if such a thing were possible. And yet this is the current political idiom. It is seriously out of touch with a set of traditions whose good effects it takes too much for granted; it fails to appreciate them, as it fails to appreciate the human situation.

Joe Sobran
Pensees

Robert Conquest … He Was Right You Effing Marxists

The historian of Stalin’s “Great Terror,” and “Harvest of Sorrow,” and a poet, Robert Conquest passed away 03 August at the age of 98. Somehow this slipped my notice until now. Conquest was one of those authors that I was required to read in my Undergraduate education and along with Dr. Fred Schwarz and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, I was rooted in my continued interest in and resistance to all ideologies tainted with Marxism. Conquest was part of a handful of authors (Swarz, Gareth Jones, Malcolm Muggeridge) who had pointed out the bloodletting of the Marxist regime. He was not taken seriously until Alexander Solzhenitsyn confirmed Conquests’s conclusions. Conquest had limericked the genocide of Lenin and Stalin,

There was a great Marxist called Lenin
Who did two or three million men in.
That’s a lot to have done in,
But where he did one in
That grand Marxist Stalin did ten in.

Conquest lived to see his disputed work and figures vindicated with the fall of the Soviet Union. After the opening up of the Soviet archives in 1991, detailed information was released that supported Conquest’s earliest conclusions that had been disputed by the Establishment Commie lovers in the West. When Conquest’s publisher asked him to expand and revise “The Great Terror,” after the opening of the Soviet Archives, Conquest is famously said to have suggested the new version of the book be titled, “I Told You So, You Fucking Fools.” Actually, this quote comes from one of Conquest’s friends (Kingsley Amis) and not Conquest himself.

Interestingly enough the NY Times in its obituary for Conquest had this to say about the proposed title,

In a moment of gleeful malice, Mr. Conquest told friends that his suggested title for the new edition was “I Told You So, You Fools” (with a vulgar adjective inserted between the last two words).

First, note that the NYT (the “Paper of record”) couldn’t even investigate far enough to realize that Conquest did not say what it accuses him of saying. Secondly, the NY Times does not manage to mention its continued malice that refuses to return the Pulitzer won by its journalist, Walter Duranty, who knowingly lied about and covered up the genocide in the Soviet Union that Conquest would later investigate. The New York Times finds it necessary to mention Conquest’s putative “gleeful malice,” without mentioning its complicit role of malice in the genocide of millions of people. The Times thus continues its jaded and irresponsible lying journalism.

Isegoria lists these as Conquest’s three laws of politics:

1.) Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.

2.) Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.

3.) The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

I’ve read a good deal of Conquest and thought this passing of one of the few who didn’t sleep was worth noting. On this matter Conquest was a giant of the 20th century.

1899 Vision of New World Order

How long has the vision for a New World Order been around?

Consider this quotation from a book by Rev. Charles Ferguson written in 1899,

“The ecclesiology of a democratic Catholicism is the ultimate form of social organization. The Church is to stand as the ecumenical democracy, the international republic of humanity in the day when the superstition of State sovereignty shall become incredible and the huge, meaningless political aggregates shall lose their strength. The strength of the wrangling empires is in their mutual jealousy and fear — a relic of the feudal tradition and the old ethnic isolation. Already the profounder antagonisms are not those that separate nations, but those that separate classes. Men are drawn together in these days not by the blood- bond, but by unanimity in ideals; as the new social order is born not of the flesh but of the spirit. The hulks of empire may rot by the sea for a time, but the life and motion will go out of them with the rise of the tide of catholic democracy…

The genetic kind of faith which is the very breath of the modern spirit, which is the spring of science and of humanizing enterprise, which believes, in spite of doubt, that this unintelligible world is at bottom reasonable, confronting the antagonisms of classes and nations with a fixed assurance that there is a justice that is best for all, making the strong the willing slaves of the weak, and convincing the people of the equality of souls ” the faith that is preparing the triumph of democracy, creating a new and inspiring literature and clearing the way for a commerce that shall claim the markets for the man ” this faith is not bred in sectarian churches.
 
And no reform of the sects will avail to produce such faith, no revival of their spirits, no purification, disinfection or purgation. The quickening of the desire to improve their spiritual condition would but intensify the evil. It is necessary to unchurch the sectarian churches before they can serve the common cause of souls. Their existence is a contradiction, and their safety is to turn against themselves.
 
The modern democratic order is the true continuator of the historic Church. And the success of that order is the success of the Great Adventure.”

 

A Cursory Look at Mad Anthony’s, Obergefell vs. Hodges Decision

“The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.”

Anthony Kennedy
Obergefell vs. Hodges

Kennedy found a Constitutional right that allows persons to define and express their identity? Paging Albert Camus.

The Constitution supports Existentialism? The Constitutional defies the notion that human beings have a set nature? The Constitution as Existentialist Anthropology? Is this written by Anthony Kennedy or by Jean Paul Sartre?

Who could have known?

______________

“The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.”

A few sentences later,

“And their (sodomite) immutable nature dictates that same-sex marriage is their only real path to this profound commitment.”

Anthony Kennedy
Obergefell vs. Hodges

1.) First they themselves are defining and expressing their identity. Then, a few sentences later we find out about their “immutable nature.” How does someone both define their identity while at the same time possessing an immutable nature? If they are defining their identity they cannot have an immutable nature. If they have an immutable nature their identity has already been defined for them. Contradict much Mad Anthony?

2.) This can only make sense, it seems, if we construe that Kennedy’s theology is anthropocentric, and his Deity is inter-subjective. Just as the Lord God is both creative and immutable, triggering change in a universe which he both transcends and pervades, so too, for Kennedy, the Almighty Individual sodomite is both creative and unchanging in his unsearchable ways. He announces to the world, “I AM, I said!” And so speaks himself into existence.  Who art thou, o critic, to question what the sovereign sodomite does? Fortunately we have judges like Mad Anthony to clarify these conundrums for us, the uninitiated. (Hat Tip — Habakkuk Mucklewrath on this one.)

____________________

 

Indeed, changed understandings of marriage are characteristic of a Nation where new dimensions of freedom become apparent to new generations, often through perspectives that begin in pleas or protests and then are considered in the political sphere and the judicial process.

Anthony Kennedy
Obergefell vs. Hodges

Cultural relativism anybody? Social Evolution? Truth as a social construct?

_____________________

The Court, like many institutions, has made assumptions defined by the world and time of which it is a part.

Anthony Kennedy
Obergefell vs. Hodges Opinion

Pure historicism. Hegel’s “Universal Spirit.” Truth is ever evolving. Criminals in one generation are the leading indicators for and those who anticipate the definition of Saints in the next generation.

Of course, all of this is a reflection of the legal theory of legal positivism.

________________

“The nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality. This is true for all persons, whatever their sexual orientation. “

Anthony Kennedy
Obergefell vs. Hodges

1.) Would you mind too terribly Mad Anthony if you could site your epistemological source for this insight?

2.) Why only two persons Mad Anthony? Why not 3 or 4 or a bakers dozen?

3.) And by what requirement two persons? An enlightened view of marriage requires us to allow for two horses and a trans-gendered lesbian woman entering into marriage if that is how she has created her self identity.

4.) Kennedy, by restricting the number entering into marriage, as well as the kind of beasts that can enter into marriage with one person, is obviously struggling with the residual remains of his Christian upbringing.

__________________

Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there. It offers the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still live there will be someone to care for the other.

Anthony Kennedy
Obergefell vs. Hodges

If Mad Anthony ever tires of writing legal briefs as a member of SCOTUS he has a future in Harlequin Romance novels.

Really, this kind of sentimental tripe in a SCOTUS legal brief?

_______________________

The limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples may long have seemed natural and just, but its inconsistency with the central meaning of the fundamental right to marry is now manifest. With that knowledge must come the recognition that laws excluding same-sex couples from the marriage right impose stigma and injury of the kind prohibited by our basic charter.

Anthony Kennedy
Obergefell vs. Hodges

Now there exists a fundamental right to marry?

And to think, all those lost years when our forebears thought that boys go with girls in marriage while thinking it only seemed natural and just. Poor besotted fools.

___________________________

The right to marry is fundamental as a matter of history and tradition, but rights come not from ancient sources alone. They rise, too, from a better informed understanding of how constitutional imperatives define a liberty that remains urgent in our own era. Many who deem same-sex marriage to be wrong reach that conclusion based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises, and neither they nor their beliefs are disparaged here. But when that sincere, personal opposition becomes enacted law and public policy, the necessary consequence is to put the imprimatur of the State itself on an exclusion that soon demeans or stigmatizes those whose own liberty is then denied. Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right.

Anthony Kennedy
Obergefell vs. Hodges

1.) “Rights come not from ancient sources alone” — Clearly a swipe at the Christian Scriptures. So, rights do not come from God alone? Well, what other God is there to give rights if not man?

2.) “Better informed understanding” — those poor poor fools of the past who were not bright enough to have the better informed understanding of this brilliant current generation.

3.) We’re not disparaging you or your beliefs as wrong in the least. We are just saying that you did not have the “better informed understanding” that we have. No disparagement at all here.

4.) So, Christian beliefs as enacted law should not be but the religious beliefs of sodomites should be enacted law?

5.) Is it ever proper to stigmatize or disparage any sexual self identity Mad Anthony? Should we stigmatize Bestiality? Should we disparage Pedophilia? Should we consider Necrophilia taboo? Remember Justice Kennedy you have created a right of self identity in this decision.

In a sane world, Justice Mad Anthony Kennedy would be committed to an insane asylum.

_______________

Were the Court to stay its hand to allow slower, case-by-case determination of the required availability of specific public benefits to same-sex couples, it still would deny gays and lesbians many rights and responsibilities intertwined with marriage.

Anthony Kennedy
Obergefell vs. Hodges

This is just another way of paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln when he said that, “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.“ Only this time Kennedy is saying that the this government cannot remain half sodomite and half non-sodomite.

___________________________

Finally, it must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned. The
First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to
continue the family structure they have long revered.

Anthony Kennedy
Obergefell vs. Hodges

Tell that to the Photographers, the Bakers, the Florists and others who have been put out of business because they tried to adhere to their religious doctrines. Tell that to those who have refuse to condone sodomite marriage by refusing to do business with sodomites in celebrating their “marriage.” Where is you proper protection now Mad Anthony?

______________

The important thing to keep in mind folks is that with this Obergefell vs. Hodges decision what SCOTUS has done is not primarily to allow sodomite marriage. What it has done is to create a legal category and Constitutional underpinning of the right to “self identity.” Self identity is the umbrella category that has been created that thus allows sodomite marriage to fall under. The possible repercussions of this is the destruction of law. If self identity is all that is required in order to garner recognized rights then no law can be written that could possibly fence in the privileges of “self-identity.” This decision erases the whole idea of “the rule of law,” and places us clearly in the twilight realm of the law of men. What happens when one self identity clashes with another self identity? No stable law can tell us that. Only the whim of men can sort that out and only guessing could be used as a guide to the outcome.

Let’s apply this. Let’s say that a child self identifies as an adult and an adult self identifies as a child. Now lets say that these two people are caught having sex. In this case it is the child who self identifies as the adult who is the pedophile. Outrageous you say?

So was the idea of sodomite marriage 40 years ago.

Statutory rape is a thing of the past. You’re 14 year old daughter is caught fornicating with her 19 year old boyfriend. Missy simply says, “I self identify as 21.”

 

 

 

 

 

Mark 6:1-13 — Kingdom Irruption … Little and Much

Introduction

As we come to this text this morning here in Mark we summarize the whole by saying, that Mark has intertwined the two stories in 6:1-13 with the common theme of Kingdom work. Because Kingdom w0rk is the overarching theme we will spend some time speaking about the Kingdom.

When we come to this narrative we summarize it as follows. After days at sea and on the road Jesus astounds his hometown with His teaching (Mark 6:1-2). Next we see that familiarity with Jesus breeds contempt (6:3). Jesus response suggests that He expected their refusal (6:4) and so cannot do a thing for them (6:5a) save, incidentally, heal a few sick folk (6:5b). While such works that the Lord Christ does accomplish, to date has culminated in audience astonishment (1:27; 2:12; 4:41; 5:20b; 5:42), now Jesus is the one astonished — by rank disbelief that is so thick (6:6a) as to be a barrier to the Kingdom. This rejection catalyzes fresh ministry (6:6b-7) by empty-pocketed ambassadors (4:13, 35-41; 5:31; 6:8-11) who get the job done (6:12-13). In Mark there’s no stopping the good news (13:10) — but no telling how it breaks through (16:1-8).

If we take the two accounts together it seems that the linchpin issue that connects them is the purposeful contrast between Jesus questioned status in the first account and His unquestioned status in the second account. In the first account the Lord Christ has no honor (6:4) and so the irruption of the Kingdom of God is minuscule and negligible (6:5). In the second the Lord Christ delegates His power to the disciples (6:6-7) with the consequence that the irruption of the Kingdom is everywhere seen where His deputies are sent (6:12-13)

That is a synopsis of the text this morning. Now let us spend a bit of time looking closer.

1.) Familiarity & the work of the Lord Christ

“The Carpenter” — Perhaps a snipe at a comparatively low trade status.
“Son of Mary” — The fact that Joseph is not mentioned may have been an attack on the alleged bastard status of Jesus … an issue that was brought up in John’s Gospel,

“We  have not been born from fornication; we have one father – God!” (John 8:41)

Clearly there is some dismissing of Jesus here because they think they know him.

The tension between Jesus and his family or hometown was an on-going sub-plot of the story in Mark, (cf. 3:20-21, 31).

21 And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself.

Mark 3:31 There came then his brethren and his mother, and, standing without, sent unto him, calling him. 32 And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee.

What is going on here? Why the lack of receptivity? Why the offense (3) at Christ?

In the book, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, we might find an answer, for there we learn about the cultural norms in antiquity.

“Honor was a limited good.  If someone gained honor, someone else lost.  To be recognized as a ‘prophet’ in one’s own town meant that honor due to other persons and other families was diminished.  Claims to more than one’s appointed (at birth) share of honor thus threatened others and would eventually trigger attempts to cut the claimant down to size.” This seems to be what is going on in the text.

Aside — Mention of Jesus siblings and Roman Catholicism on Mary’s perpetual virginity.

2.) But we see that Christ as more than a Hometown boy

a.) Christ as Prophet

4 But Jesus, said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.

By referring to himself as a “prophet,” he associated himself with a long line of counter-cultural figures within Israel. In the Gospel of Mark, others would also view him in this way (cf. 6:15; 8:28).  The role of the Prophet was often the role of one isolated. The prophet was to the Culture what a chicken bone was to the gullet.

In an honor/shame society, “prophets” would have received honor (cf. 11:32).  But the traditional wisdom of the age was that this occurred generally in places in which prophets were less familiar.

But to demonstrate that Christ did indeed have both authority and honor Mark gives us 7-13.

The rejection at Jesus’ hometown synagogue did not hinder the mission for long.  In point of fact, as suggested earlier, the whole thrust of putting these two narratives back to back may have been to contrast the paucity of Kingdom irruption among Christ’s own people, with the expansive Kingdom irruption by the Deputies of Christ under the umbrella of His power and authority.
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3.) Rejection of ministry — Dust and feet

Shaking dust off the feet appears to have been a prophetic demonstration: from those who repudiate the kingdom’s herald, nothing should be received — not even their dirt (see Nehemiah 5:13; Acts 13:51).  Those who reject are rejected. The time for the forced bowing of the knee has not yet come. If there are those who prefer the culture of death as opposed to abundant life conferred by Christ then their choice is their misery.

4.) Question of Authority

Mark 6:2 From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands? 3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.

7 And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and gave them power over unclean spirits;

Note the contrast between the locals who questioned his origins and the power later declared that would have been a testimony of Christ’s origins. It may be that Mark is purposely setting up this contrast so that we might see the authority of Christ.

This isn’t the first time that Jesus and His authority has been doubted like this,

Mark 1:27 And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among themselves, saying, What thing is this? what new doctrine is this? for with authority commandeth he even the unclean spirits, and they do obey him

5.) Note the character of the Kingdom of God

 
1.) It was not a matter of a having had a new subjective interior personal or spiritual experience. People may have new interior or personal experiences in relation to the presence of the Kingdom of God but those subjective interior or personal experiences are not the Kingdom of God as the Lord Christ and His emissaries announced the Kingdom of God.
 
If you had given a testimony to a first century Jew, as we often give our testimony today, about how you had a new spiritual experience, and a feeling of forgiveness, and of how, because of Jesus, your private interior world had been reordered so that you were now a different person they may have congratulated you and told you “that is interesting,” but they still would have been asking you what all that had to do with the “Kingdom of God.” The Kingdom of God had objective markers that would have demonstrated visibly the “reign of God” in the affairs of men.
 
And we have seen those objective markers as we have looked at the ministry of Christ — the casting out of Demons, the healing of the sick, the raising of the dead, the mastery over the elements — all these are present to communicate that the Lord Christ, as King, had brought and inaugurated the long anticipated Reign of God over the affairs of men.
 
2.) And so in Scripture we see that coming Kingdom of God was about public events. We see that here in this passage in Mark 6. The Lord Christ is the King and as King He commissions His Kingdom ambassadors to go out and demonstrate the long anticipated divine irruption, and so presence of God’s Kingdom.
 
Mark 6:13 And they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them.
 
3.) Note though that everywhere the Kingdom is spoken of implicitly or explicitly the demand is for “repentance.”
 
Mark 6:12 And they went out, and preached that men should repent.
 
One is caught up into God’s Kingdom work in the context of their own repentance as given to them by God, and wherever the Reign of God is announced there the command for repentance is announced concurrently.
 
This is why we are a people characterized by repentance. This is why week in and week out, as we gather here, we — who have been swept up into God’s Kingdom — take the time in our liturgy to confess and repent of our sins. This is the disposition, character and demeanor of Kingdom Citizens. Our whole lives are marked by repentance because we are the forgiven people.

4.) Now the question that begs being asked at this point is, “If the Lord Christ brought this Kingdom of God,  “where is this Kingdom now”?Where is this renewal of the World, and the establishment of God’s justice for the Cosmos we might ask?

Well, remember we have consistently taught that there is a “now, not yet,” dynamic to this Kingdom. Scripture teaches that with the confluence of Redemptive events in the Life, Death, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost of our Lord Christ, the Kingdom of God has been inaugurated — which is to say it is present in its full and promissory beginnings.

And this is the language of Scripture everywhere. We have been translated from the Kingdom of Darkness to the Kingdom of God’s dear Son (Col. 1:13).  Consistent with that Paul can say elsewhere that, “as belonging to Christ the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! (II Cor. 5:17). Indeed, so much are we members of this NOW Kingdom of God that we already “have been resurrected and ascended with Christ; “God raised us up with Christ, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:6).

These are all eschatological statements communicating that the Kingdom of God has been inaugurated and that those who look to Christ have been swept up into it by the sovereign power, favor, and grace of God.

The early Christians were so convinced that this Kingdom of God reality was true that they organized their lives around this reality that they who were once not the people of God’s Kingdom were indeed now the people of God’s Kingdom. The first Christians re-decorated their thought world so that their symbols, their liturgy, and their habits, all communicated their conviction that the Kingdom of God was present.

But the Scriptures also teach a “not yetness.” The full leavening effect of the fully present Kingdom was and is not yet present. We still pray “They Kingdom come, thy will be done — on Earth as in heaven.”  We still live in a time when the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. 23And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.

As Dr. Joseph R. Nally has succinctly put it,

So, Already we experience God’s presence through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but we await the complete presence of God (Eph. 1:13-14; Rev. 21:3). Already we worship, but we know that someday there will be perfect worship (Rom. 12:1; Rev. 22:3-5). Already we have fellowship with God and one another, but the perfect fellowship is yet to come (1 John 1:5-7; Rev. 21:1-22:6). Already we experience peace, joy, and love, but these will be perfect some day (Gal. 5:22-23; Rev. 22:3). Already we have experienced a resurrection, but we await a future one (Rom. 6:110; Rev. 20:4-6, 11-15). Already we participate in a special meal with Christ, but we await the wedding supper of the Lamb (1 Cor. 11:23-26; Rev. 19:9).

Well, having said that what might we summarize with?

Well, it explains why Christians are Christ centered. Christ is the Kingdom and the Kingdom is Christ. Christ is the one by whom the Exile is ended, the captives are set free, and the Cosmos is re-made. By His stripes we are healed and in, through, and by Him we have been reconciled to God and so have peace with God.

We believe that as Christ brought the Kingdom of God, that Christ marks the pivot of all history. Before Christ there was only anticipation and post Christ there is the emphasis of fulfillment. Because that is so, we further believe that in Christ alone can meaning be found. If Christ is the pivot of all time He is therefore the pivot of all meaning.  He, therefore is the King of History, and the King of Epistemology, as well as being the King in whom is found forgiveness and the relief from guilt.