Surreptitious Revolution

Poland On the Verge of a Blasphemous Heresy

Lucia Maria, over at NZ Conservative had blogged on something quite startling.  We reproduce the post in full, and make a couple of closing observations.

Poland set to give total protection to babies from conception

The Catholic country of Poland is set to give universal protection to unborn babies from conception after a massive grass roots campaign gathered support for such a measure. They've kept the news from the English-speaking world until now, because the Poles were worried they would be flooded with pro-abort money to oppose their efforts. 

The Coming Race

An Offensive Mirror

We are simple souls, and so find ourselves "conflicted" (to use pop psych jargon) over the public vituperate venting about one Macsyna King.  How we love a mob.  All heat and no light.  A dirty bomb.

Macsyna is coming out of the closet via a book, written by Ian Wishart.  The mob has called for the book to be banned, via boycott, successfully pressuring booksellers not to carry it.  She was the mother of murdered (or manslaughtered) infant twins, Chris and Cru Kahui.  The court acquitted her then current boyfriend (and father of the twins) of responsibility for their deaths.  No-one else has been charged.  The defence argued that Macsyna was their killer.

If the court evidence is to be believed, King has been both wretched and depraved.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

A Greece Fire

Money, Love, Desire - Foundations of Mercy
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, June 29, 2011

The difference between secular conservatives and secular progressives is that the conservatives talk sense without a foundation, and the progressives talk nonsense without one. Take the truism that you cannot indefinitely spend money you don't have.

The secular conservatives believe that reality is not optional, but cannot give a thorough or consistent account of that reality. The secular progressives can give an account of their reality, but couple this with a firm belief that all such realities are optional, and can be altered by the will of the people.

This is the end result of believing that the State is the incarnation of their Deity, which is Demos, the people. Vox populi vox Dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God.

Beware The Energizer Bunny

Gender Quotients

Over at NZ Conservative, Andrei has published a cheeky little number.  Actually, we trust Andrei's life and slur insurance is paid up and ready to go, for he is living dangerously.  He has somewhat foolishly dared to criticise the established religion in Aotearoa.  Next he will be featured on I Shouldn't Be Alive.


The particular article in Aotearoa's secular creed  which Andrei has challenged is the official dogma of wimmin's equality in the workforce.  As our NZ readers will be aware there has been a bit of a stoush going on Down Under about whether female employees take more sick days than male.  The Public Service Association (a union of state sector employees) has done some statistical analysis and "proved" that the gender difference in sick days taken is so close as to be a rounding error.

A New Russian Revolution?

Medvedev Versus Putin

An intriguing article has just been published in Foreign Policy by Leon Aron.  Its provocative title is "Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union is Wrong".  Its thesis is two fold. 

Firstly, the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union was an emergence of a strong consensus amongst the governing classes and the educated that the Soviet Union was ethically wrong.  Without this, it would never have collapsed: the Evil Empire would have rumbled on. 

Secondly, a similar conviction is emerging now in Russia, that Russia itself has to change and de-Putinize.  Watch this space.

We shall see.  We fear that the theses are grounded upon the canard that underneath the skin of every human being lies the soul of a liberal Western democrat just itching to burst forth.  Its the same world-view that is leading the Commentariate to get all excited about the "Arab Spring".

Without God, Without Creed, Part V

Taking Offence at God

The sovereignty of Man is the end game of all idolatry.  Systematic, rigorous atheism is the final objective.  When a culture reaches this end point, Satan has it more in his grasp, than save only direct, demonic possession.  There is no culture so gulled by the Evil One as one which denies the existence of either the Living God or Satan.

In the nineteenth century, the West tipped from Belief to Unbelief.  There was a particular archimedean point; the transition appeared suddenly.  In one decade it was fashionable to believe in a god, called God; in the next it no longer was.  The power and credence of Unbelief appeared all the more compelling because its victory was sudden, all-embracing and complete.  Belief crumbled like a dessicated biscuit.  But as with the fall of all great kingdoms, it had been long coming; Unbelief had been seeping into the vapours of Christendom for over two hundred years, gradually extending its poisonous fumes.

How Marvellous are Thy Works

The Power of Christ in the Dark Places of the World

It seems that many of today's prisons are becoming places of Amazing Grace.  We heard Pastor Alistair Begg, of Parkside Church in Cleveland reading some letters to the congregation received as a result of the church's radio ministry.  Several had come from prisoners.  One wrote:

I have been faithful in serving the Lord these last seven or eight years. I have been incarcerated now for over twenty years. As one brother put it, since I was arrested at 17, I know nothing of life.

I just finished listening to your study on the Father's discipline, from 1998. I may not know much about life but I can agree with the Psalmist when he writes,

Lord you are my portion and my cup of blessing;
You hold my future.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
Indeed I have a beautiful inheritance.

This chap, is probably a lifer, and therefore likely to be a murderer. He may spend the rest of his life in prison. The same infinite power of the Holy Spirit which saved the thief on the Cross, causing him to be born again, in the most helpless and hopeless of circumstances, is blowing across the prisons. The wretched of the earth are becoming glorious citizens of the heavenly kingdom.

Similar testimonies and accounts can be heard from within our own prisons, here in New Zealand. 

Chuck Colson has written an essay on the power of forgiveness.  In it he describes some of the amazing things he has observed as a result of prisoners becoming Christians.  God is good and glorious indeed.

Ash Clouds and Risk

 To God, or to Government We Entrust . . .

Risk is unavoidable.  Life is filled with the uncertain and the contingent.  A society's approach to risk and risk-taking peels back the skin, exposing its heart and the gods that dwell therein.

Consider this contrast.  In Europe, Icelandic volcano ash results in governmental authorities shutting down air-ports and terminating air travel.  In New Zealand and Australia, Argentinian volcano ash results in (some) airlines continuing to fly.  Why the difference? 

Reaping the Whirlwind

The War Against Girls

Since the late 1970s, 163 million female babies have been aborted by parents seeking sons
By JONATHAN V. LAST
This review appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

Mara Hvistendahl is worried about girls. Not in any political, moral or cultural sense but as an existential matter. She is right to be. In China, India and numerous other countries (both developing and developed), there are many more men than women, the result of systematic campaigns against baby girls. In Unnatural Selection, Ms. Hvistendahl reports on this gender imbalance: what it is, how it came to be and what it means for the future.

In nature, 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. This ratio is biologically ironclad. Between 104 and 106 is the normal range, and that's as far as the natural window goes. Any other number is the result of unnatural events.

Peace in Our Time

Hone, the Negotiator

Maoridom's new messiah won his electoral contest over the weekend.  His first order of business is to enter negotiations with the Maori Party.  We expect those negotiations to be free, full, frank . . . and brief. 

Here is a preview of how the negotiations will run--from our inside operative, Wally Fly.

Without God, Without Creed, Part IV

The Necromancer is Back, and He is Cloaked in Morality

By the nineteenth century the church had so occluded the Gospel and the true faith with human idolatries that it was severely compromised.  This was true throughout Europe and the UK.  It was also true in the United States.

By making the creation autonomous--its own centre of authority over against the Living God--it was forced to "redefine" God Himself.  Like a Hollywood makeover, God was now conceived of as a localised authority--one centre of power alongside a host of others.  God was now unofficially an idol--a creation of human imagination and invention.  Baalism has returned to God's covenant people.  God became a localised deity, no longer the One Who was infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, goodness and truth.  He was no longer infinitely transcendent.  Consequently, He was no longer infinitely immanent in the Creation.  He was a demi-creature.

The outcome would be the same as had occurred in ancient Israel.

Now on Film

Notes From the Tilt-A-Whirl Movie

Justin Taylor has spoken often of the subversive book by Nate Wilson, Notes From the Tilt A Whirl.  We also have written several pieces on this remarkable piece of work, here, and here.  Wilson takes out out of the abstract tomes on general and special revelation and confronts us in the warp and woof of our lives, explaining that God speaks to us every day, all the time.  We need to listen to His story, to what He is saying to us, and become the characters in the story we would love to be.

Wilson skewers the idea--so prevalent amongst Christians--that God needs to speak to us, to guide us, telling us what course of study to select, or what car to buy.  God is speaking to us all the time about these kind of things, but we don't listen; we don't hear His voice. 

A film companion to the book has just been released.
Here’s the description:

Better Than Cheerleaders

Bounding Off the Reservation

Watching the spluttering apoplexy of the Commentariate in full throat is "so diverting", to borrow one of Jane's phrases.  When something beyond the pale happens, one sees an anger, grief, and outrage that resembles confrontations with blasphemy.  Which is what they are, of course. 

Alisdair Thompson, Chief Executive of the Employers and Manufacturers Association has just run off the reservation.  He has suggested that (some) women have less productivity in the workforce because of severe monthly menstrual cycles.  To the Commentariate this action is not just duplicitous; it is a blasphemy against the established religion of Woman and her rights.  Consequently it has erupted.  As Gwendolyn Brooks would say,

And true, they are hurling spittle, rock,
Garbage and fruit . . .

The feminists have gone into a dervish, lacerating themselves, calling for vengeance.

The Coming Ice Age

Don't Panic

Richard Littlejohn
First published in MailOnline

At last, some good news for polar bears. The world is about to enter a mini Ice Age. Scientists working for the American Astronomical Society are predicting a significant drop in solar activity over the next decade. Last time this happened, between 1645 and 1715, global temperatures plummeted and the River Thames froze over every winter.

While climate change alarmists insist we are heading for meltdown, the truth is that the world has actually been getting cooler in recent years.

Although the findings from the National Solar Observatory in New Mexico are bad news for the global warming industry, they are not necessarily good news for the rest of us. Politicians are bound to exploit the new evidence for their own purposes . . .

Turning Out the Lights

"Shocking" Power of Memorization

In his provocative book entitled Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child (ISI Books: Wilmington, Delaware, 2010), Anthony Esolen adopts the persona of an adviser giving parents some ideas on how to ruin their children's imagination.

One way is to discourage memory and memorization. He writes:

Doug Wilson's Letter From America

Reusable Crud

Creation and Food
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, June 19, 2011

So recently some pesky researchers decided to investigate reusable shopping bags. They offered new reusables to shoppers leaving a grocery store, asked them a few questions about their treatment of the bags, and sent them on their way. Then they toted the bags off to the lab to test them.

Turns out the warm, dark, moist interior of a reusable bag is an ideal spot for growing bacteria, mold, and yeast.
But environmental groups retorted that this wouldn't happen if you washed the bags, duh. But since we are obviously not concerned about the environment anymore, make sure to wash them using lots of hot water, with lots of suds.

Nobody need know about that, but they will all see you walking into the store with the eco-sensitive bag in hand. And that is what it's all about, right? The globe is not really warming. It is just the glow of eco-smugness that makes it feel like that.

Without God, Without Creed, Part III

Man In Charge

Christendom lies broke and the temples of Baal are flush, svelte and in charge.  So it has come to be in the West.  Unbelief dominates the culture; the only kind of "Christian" faith tolerable is one which assumes from the outset that its God is finite, limited, a creation of needy minds.  Recognition of Christianity--when it occurs--in the West amounts to nothing more than a piteous condescension to a puerile superstition of yesteryear.  Christians are regarded as those with nothing more than a simplistic nostalgia for the past.    

Now when this kind of massive shift occurs in religion--from cultural dominance to subservience--devotees of the new god readily conclude that the old god, the now redundant and replaced god, was impotent and weak.  The Scriptures testify to this.  When Elijah was on Mount Carmel, he taunted the self-lacerated prophets of Baal by lampooning the weakness and powerlessness of  Baal.

Standing as the People of God

Dr Al Mohler on Homosexuality

This post is written by Justin Taylor.

One of the best talks I’ve heard on homosexuality, the church, and the gospel was delivered by Albert Mohler at the 2004 Desiring God National Conference. You can listen to it here. A chapter-length version was then published in Sex and the Supremacy of Christ, which you can read online for free.

It might be helpful to reprint a few excerpts.

Praying for Islamic Lands

Breaking Satan's Ostensible Iron Grip

Christians are not allowed to preach the Gospel in Islamic lands. Under Islamic law, if an Islamic person converts and becomes a Christian he automatically attracts the death penalty. Satan holds these nations in a terrible grip, shutting up the people in a dark prison, effectively preventing them from hearing the Gospel.

Christians everywhere ought to pray with great boldness and strong faith that this oppression and tragedy will stop. In Revelation 20: 1--3 we are told that the Dragon, the Serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan has been thrown into the abyss so that he should not "deceive the nations any longer."

According to David Chilton, (The Days of Vengeance, p. 502) most Reformed scholars agree that this refers to Satan's inability to prevent the message of the Gospel from achieving success. Satan's opposition to the Gospel takes many forms. When he so controls a state or a people that the very law of the land outlaws the Gospel and prevents it from being heard by anyone, Christians have a biblical warrant boldly to remind the Lord that Satan has been bound and in the light of that to be praying very specifically that this travesty be brought to an end speedily.

How it will happen is beyond our ken. But, as ever, the Lord moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. We ought to take no rest, and give Him not rest until He does this. (Isaiah 62:6,7)

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Failure and Success

Dealing With Sin
Written by Douglas Wilson
Friday, June 17, 2011

What are the odds that someone can be very successful, and yet mangage to walk humbly with his God? Well, the odds are pretty thin, say most, but what we neglect to notice is that the odds are not exactly great for those who are unsuccessful either.

Among believers, we have a deep suspicion that success means automatic compromise. If someone rockets to the top, we wonder, "who sinned? this man or his parents that this has happened to him?"

And of course, we have no shortage of examples of failed successes to point to. But our problem is that we don't point to the failed failures. There are a lot of those also. It does not profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul, but neither does it profit him to lose the world and his soul along with it.

In God's calculus, success and failure are determined by His holy standards, which do not include money or fame. They are not included in either direction, and whichever way the money and fame are flowing, the temptations will correspond to that situation. So, whether well fed or hungry, do justice, love mercy, and walk with humility.

"The Office" in Real Time

Awkward

The Dalai Lama as advocate for an oppressed people is to be respected.  As an eastern guru propagating Tibetan Bhuddism, he deservedly wears the sobriquet of  a fool.  No doubt he is a nice bloke in his own way.

Recently, he was involved in one of the more awkward put downs of an Australian interviewer, unintended to be sure, but all the more funny as a result. This guy could become the Aussie Ricky Gervais.  If only he hadn't started laughing at himself in embarrassment.



Congrats to the Aussie presenter who mocked himself as a result. But its OK, because he "felt better" after  speaking with the Dalai Lama. Yeah, right.

Without God, Without Creed, Part II

In Baal We Trust

We continue our series upon the causes of modern Unbelief in the West.  The redemptive context is that the first Christendom has fallen, being replaced by materialism, atheism, and secularism.  This represents a divine curse upon God's people.  The Bible makes it very clear: when God's people turn away from Him, He will bring the curses (and not the blessings) of the Covenant upon them (Deuteronomy 28).  Being given over to the hand of Unbelief is one of those curses. 

James Turner, in his important book, Without God, Without Creed: the Origins of Unbelief in America argues that Christendom began to apostasize and disobey (thus, preparing for the triumph of secular atheism in the twentieth century) at the end of the seventeenth century.  At the time it appeared to be a small matter.  But it provoked God to wrath and eventually tore down Christendom.  It had to do with beginning to assert the autonomy or independence of the creation from the Creator.  Turner writes:

Christian Nations No More

End of the Middle East Christian?

By David Isaac
Republished from Big Peace. Originally from the Shmuel Katz website.

A little over a month after former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s fall, Ayman Anwar Mitri, a Coptic Christian, was beaten by Islamists inside his apartment, which they had torched.  “When they were beating me, they kept saying: ‘We won’t leave any Christians in this country,’” Mr. Mitri recalled to The Wall Street Journal.

Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, recently wrote: “Since [late February], a heightened campaign of violence is being directed against Egypt’s Copts and is presaging a mass exodus from the country…”

You’d never guess this listening to President Obama’s speeches. In a major speech on the Middle East in May he declared: “In Tahrir Square, we heard Egyptians from all walks of life chant, ‘Muslims, Christians, we are one.’” Apparently Obama didn’t get the memo that they are no longer one.

Chrestomathy

God's Kingdom is "Thick"

(. . . in the Clifford Geertzian sense)

It is unlikely that many of us will be famous, or even remembered. But not less important than the brilliant few that lead a nation or a literature to fresh achievements, are the unknown many whose patient efforts keep the world from running backward; who guard and maintain the ancient values, even if they do not conquer new; whose inconspicuous triumph it is to pass on what they inherited from their fathers, unimpaired and undiminished, to their sons. Enough, for almost all of us, if we can hand on the torch, and not let it down; content to win the affection, if it may be, of a few who know us and to be forgotten when they in their turn have vanished. The destiny of mankind is not governed wholly by its “stars.”

F. F. Lucas

Easy Dupes

Pathetic and Destructive

Narratives are powerful.  They control what we identify as significant data or facts, how we empirically apprehend the data, what interpretations and shades of significance we place upon the evidence, and the conclusions drawn.  Absolute objectivity is impossible.  Only relative neutrality and disinterestedness are possible.  The cut of our jib determines the winds we catch and the sailing progress we make. True objectivity consists only in this: full disclosure of the jib's cut whilst our sailing exploits narrative unfolds.

Post-modernism has challenged our culture to face up to the inevitable and intrinsic cant in everyone's understanding.  That is why it is despised by those still claiming absolute objectivity, operating just by the facts, only the facts.  Every so often we see the pervasive power of narrative on ridiculous display.  It can lead to an easy gullibility and childish credulity. 

"Gay Girl in Damascus" had been lionised by the Commentariate--which, as it happens, relentlessly denies the cut of its own sailing rig--both to itself and its audience.

Descendants of a Mad Emperor

 Fiddling While Rome Burns

Here is Bill Gross--one of the more sane and sage voices in investment markets today.  He explains why the debt situation in the US is much worse than that in Greece. It will drown us all.  Politicians not facing up to this reality are beneath contempt, guilty of a swingeing dereliction of duty on the grandest of scales.  How long must we endure political leaders attempting to lead by focus groups? 

Such politicians either perpetually back up or follow the herd.  Either way they are supine vacillating fools, not leaders.

Emotive Twaddle

Deafened by the Cheering

We have often argued on this website that human society is invariably and inevitably bloody.  Bloodshed is as intrinsic a part of existence in this fallen world as mortality.  The issue is not whether a culture sheds blood, but which blood is shed, for what reasons, and on what grounds. 

The more a culture turns from God, the more unrighteousness twaddle bloodshed will come into prominence.  In our particular culture in the West we are increasingly offended at the sight of blood and the taking of life.  We wish that things were not that way.  So our killing has to be done away from sight and sound.  It is sanitized.  Meat comes from supermarkets, not from animals, don't you know.  When it becomes apparent that animals have had to be killed to provide food, then we are sickened and outraged. 

Here is an exemplar of our saccharin idiocy.

Churchillian Leaders

We Owe Them So Much

New Zealand is starting to feel the impact of the true costs of fighting climate change.  Led by our feckless Prime Minister, our nation has suited up into rusty armour and tilted recklessly at the climate windmill.  All the way down to the supermarket, where the price of food is rising far faster than any human calibrated temperature.  The world is now short of food because food is being re-deployed to fight the climate.  This has to be some sort of joke, right.  Sorry.  Life is stranger than fiction. 

Now, while our Prime Minister has allied himself to the Left in prosecuting this cause, that Greek chorus on the Left has begun to wail because "the poor" are no longer able to purchase sufficient food.  Dirty Fonterra, our dairy monopoly, is putting profits ahead of people.  Once again it's the capitalists ripping off the vulnerable--or so runs the narrative. We need price controls. These self-same duplicitous demagogues artfully conceal that they and their ilk are primarily responsible.  They have layered our economy with costly quixotic windmills and castles which must be assailed for the salvation of mankind--but let's keep that quiet.  Far better that everyone lies in gut-gnawing poverty than the world's climate change.  Never before in human history has so much damage been done by so few to so many.

It's going to get worse.  Much worse.  The UK is leading the way, and we, in New Zealand, are fast followers.  Well, we followed the good old Mother Country into two world wars, and countless regional skirmishes, so we might as well follow it into penury.  Here is James Dellinpole's take on what is happening in the UK--right now. 

Without God, Without Creed, Part I

We'd Better Get This Right

The first Christendom has been disassembled.  Unbelief and its attendant paganisms now hold the West in their pitiless thrall.  The decisive tipping point seems to be located around the middle of the nineteenth century.  What is surprising is how swiftly the shift occurred.  In the first half of the century "everyone" was Christian in the UK and the US.  Even non-believers hastened to assure everyone that whilst they did not accept orthodox Christian doctrine, they still believed in a god (which they spelled "God" to convey the notion that their deity was in the same ballpark as the God of orthodox Christianity.)  Suddenly, it all changed.  Within a few short decades secularism, materialism and atheism became fashionable, acceptable and dominant.  How this abrupt change occurred and its deeper causes are matters of considerable curiosity.   

James Turner, in Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985) presents a diagnosis of how this pervasive change occurred.  Turner teaches modern US intellectual history at Notre Dame.  His central thesis would be surprising to many:  Unbelief was caused by religion.

Doug Wilson's Letter From America

Love Tanks

Marriage and Family - Some Hard Words for Fathers
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Over the years my wife and I have referred to the problem of a child having a "low tank," meaning that it was time for us to pour on the affection. But this, like everything else in this sorry world, can be misconstrued and misapplied.

When a kid has a low tank, he is low on what he needs from you. She is low on what you ought to be giving. To simply assume that the only possible thing needed is "daddy dates" is a recipe for spoiling a kid.

As we have noted, the context of faithful child rearing is warmth and affection. Grace contains law, just as the Garden of Eden contained a prohibited tree. But it was not a garden full of prohibited trees, with one solitary available tree in the middle. Grace is the context, but limits are there for a reason.

Another illustration I have used is that of a check book. When a father has to make a decision that will be difficult for a child to accept, this amounts to writing a major check.