Sunday, January 10, 2010
Persecution Complex
That’s what Christians are accused of having. I think there’s some truth in it. Not as much as atheists would like to believe but true nevertheless.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven” Matthew 5: 10-12
I’ve read about people living far shortened lives in North Korea, spending their last years in tiger cages simply for being Christians. I’ve spoken with members of the underground Church in China. Jobs lost. Separated from families. Jailed. Not allowed to meet in groups of more than two people, worship for the underground Church takes place while walking down the street in groups no larger than three. I’ve read about Christians in Somalia (there are less than a thousand) having to hide their Bibles lest they be executed by Muslims. Only last week, once such woman was shot to death after an informer came to the door, asking for prayer and Bible reading.
I couldn’t tell you how many Bibles and books about the Bible that I have in this house. I don’t have to hide them. I can speak to whom ever I want about my Lord and Saviour. I can go to Church and raise my children to know about Jesus. All of this I can do freely. Persecution is something foreign to my experience.
Persecution - pursuing the failure of another individual or group of individuals because of who they are, what they believe, how they look or speak. I don’t know what the dictionary says but that’s my definition. Jesus said, “If they hated Me, they’re going to hate you [His followers] also.”
There was an instance about fifteen years ago where my employer told me that as long as I held to my Christian beliefs, I’d received the last promotion I’d ever get. This might sound weird, but when my employer told me that, it actually brought to me a sense of peace. I felt peace because I knew in my heart that nothing except the presence of Jesus in my soul was driving him to such desperate measures. I’ve always worked in secular agencies and I believe absolutely that it would be unethical to promote my faith, especially to the clients. There was NOTHING overt about my following Jesus in the workplace.
If I had been acting like I do on this blog I could have understood it. None of the push-back that I receive on this blog is persecution. I deserve everything I get. But this employer, well that was different. I was one of four Clinical Supervisors and I was good at what I did. I believe that the only reason my boss was obsessed with my belief in Jesus, my faith in Jesus, my love for Jesus, was that the love that I receive FROM Jesus was being passed on to some pretty difficult to love clients and staff. The likeness and presence of Jesus was showing, and for an atheist, that was intolerable.
That, of course, is what drives any and all persecution that Christians experience. The presence of Jesus is intolerable to a fallen world. People like Christopher Hitchens feel smothered by His presence. Richard Dawkins feels threatened by His presence.
The fact that Jesus WILL build His Church is an absolute nightmare for atheist and Muslim fundamentalists.
The victory is secure. The game is won. Our side wins and there is not a damn thing that atheists or Islamo fascists can do about it. Oh sure, there is going to be some bloody skirmishes here and there. The Bible tells us that at some point there were be an intense and sustained attempt to kill every Christian on earth. I actually believe that atheist heads will be on the same chopping block but that’s another story. In the end, Christ is coming in power and glory to banish evil from His kingdom for ever and ever, Amen.
Some people feel irritated by that; they’re frustrated and threatened by that. What God is going to do in the future is what atheists want Him to do, today. They want suffering and death and evil to be taken away forever. The dilemma for atheists is that when evil is done away with, as enemies of their Creator, they’ll be going with it. Trying to be part of the solution to the presence of evil, atheists make the same mistake that atheists have made for millennia. Trying to abolish followers of Christ and what they believe and teach simply drives them deeper into the arms of Jesus. Hangers on, like the entertainers Ginx describes (Tila Tequila is an example) run away at the sight of persecution and the purified Church becomes so attractive that rather than eliminating Christianity from the globe, the Church grows and grows and grows.
Praise God from whom ALL blessings flow.
As members of the underground church in China told us, “Please do not pray for freedom from persecution for us. Pray that God’s love will be known to millions and millions more every month.”
“These trials have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold . . . may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.” 1st Peter 1:7.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven” Matthew 5: 10-12
I’ve read about people living far shortened lives in North Korea, spending their last years in tiger cages simply for being Christians. I’ve spoken with members of the underground Church in China. Jobs lost. Separated from families. Jailed. Not allowed to meet in groups of more than two people, worship for the underground Church takes place while walking down the street in groups no larger than three. I’ve read about Christians in Somalia (there are less than a thousand) having to hide their Bibles lest they be executed by Muslims. Only last week, once such woman was shot to death after an informer came to the door, asking for prayer and Bible reading.
I couldn’t tell you how many Bibles and books about the Bible that I have in this house. I don’t have to hide them. I can speak to whom ever I want about my Lord and Saviour. I can go to Church and raise my children to know about Jesus. All of this I can do freely. Persecution is something foreign to my experience.
Persecution - pursuing the failure of another individual or group of individuals because of who they are, what they believe, how they look or speak. I don’t know what the dictionary says but that’s my definition. Jesus said, “If they hated Me, they’re going to hate you [His followers] also.”
There was an instance about fifteen years ago where my employer told me that as long as I held to my Christian beliefs, I’d received the last promotion I’d ever get. This might sound weird, but when my employer told me that, it actually brought to me a sense of peace. I felt peace because I knew in my heart that nothing except the presence of Jesus in my soul was driving him to such desperate measures. I’ve always worked in secular agencies and I believe absolutely that it would be unethical to promote my faith, especially to the clients. There was NOTHING overt about my following Jesus in the workplace.
If I had been acting like I do on this blog I could have understood it. None of the push-back that I receive on this blog is persecution. I deserve everything I get. But this employer, well that was different. I was one of four Clinical Supervisors and I was good at what I did. I believe that the only reason my boss was obsessed with my belief in Jesus, my faith in Jesus, my love for Jesus, was that the love that I receive FROM Jesus was being passed on to some pretty difficult to love clients and staff. The likeness and presence of Jesus was showing, and for an atheist, that was intolerable.
That, of course, is what drives any and all persecution that Christians experience. The presence of Jesus is intolerable to a fallen world. People like Christopher Hitchens feel smothered by His presence. Richard Dawkins feels threatened by His presence.
The fact that Jesus WILL build His Church is an absolute nightmare for atheist and Muslim fundamentalists.
The victory is secure. The game is won. Our side wins and there is not a damn thing that atheists or Islamo fascists can do about it. Oh sure, there is going to be some bloody skirmishes here and there. The Bible tells us that at some point there were be an intense and sustained attempt to kill every Christian on earth. I actually believe that atheist heads will be on the same chopping block but that’s another story. In the end, Christ is coming in power and glory to banish evil from His kingdom for ever and ever, Amen.
Some people feel irritated by that; they’re frustrated and threatened by that. What God is going to do in the future is what atheists want Him to do, today. They want suffering and death and evil to be taken away forever. The dilemma for atheists is that when evil is done away with, as enemies of their Creator, they’ll be going with it. Trying to be part of the solution to the presence of evil, atheists make the same mistake that atheists have made for millennia. Trying to abolish followers of Christ and what they believe and teach simply drives them deeper into the arms of Jesus. Hangers on, like the entertainers Ginx describes (Tila Tequila is an example) run away at the sight of persecution and the purified Church becomes so attractive that rather than eliminating Christianity from the globe, the Church grows and grows and grows.
Praise God from whom ALL blessings flow.
As members of the underground church in China told us, “Please do not pray for freedom from persecution for us. Pray that God’s love will be known to millions and millions more every month.”
“These trials have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold . . . may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.” 1st Peter 1:7.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
I Could Never Do That
“I don’t even know his last name.” That was the theme of a country song on the radio a month or two ago. It’s about a woman taking home a man from the bar and in the morning she’s feeling (hee hee) naughty because she didn’t even know his last name.
In an age of HIV / AID’s I think the promotion (hee hee) of that kind of life-style is criminal. It wouldn’t matter if she knew his full name and family history. She was having sex with a man she’d just met - Bad Idea!
And that is why I could never be a disc jockey. The lifestyles described in secular music, if followed (“I love their songs because they describe life as it is.”) will virtually guarantee
. broken relationships,
. children being raised by multiple “uncles”,
. a life of never knowing real love and
. unhappiness
while living a chronic pattern of using others and being used by others.
Love, according to those geniuses in the secular world is described by “If the person that you want to fuck is cute, and rich and desired by others then, like, you’re in love."
To make sure that it's true love and not just infatuation, look for telltale signs of love like, possessive, controlling behaviours, or the sometimes hard to recognise greed / need / lust combination. True love the kind promoted by celebrities is jealous and obsessive and absent of the freedom promoted by the religious. Of course love is sex but most of all true secular love is based on impulse and defies all rational self-control. Really all you need to find love in the secular world is to be emotionally stunted and sexually disoriented.
Probably ten years ago, or so, I was riding with a couple staff to a meeting when a certain song came on the radio. With a “Oh I love this song” she turned it up. It was that song “Every where you go. Every move you make, every breath you take, I’ll be watching you.” A love song, Pfft!
I mentioned that it sounded like a theme song for stalkers. This mental health counsellor, for the first time, saw that song in a light other than obsession = love.
At this very moment my four-year-old is down stairs singing to Band Hero, “Do you want to be my lover . . .”
I could never be a disc jockey forcing / indoctrinating the most vulnerable among us with secular values.
In an age of HIV / AID’s I think the promotion (hee hee) of that kind of life-style is criminal. It wouldn’t matter if she knew his full name and family history. She was having sex with a man she’d just met - Bad Idea!
And that is why I could never be a disc jockey. The lifestyles described in secular music, if followed (“I love their songs because they describe life as it is.”) will virtually guarantee
. broken relationships,
. children being raised by multiple “uncles”,
. a life of never knowing real love and
. unhappiness
while living a chronic pattern of using others and being used by others.
Love, according to those geniuses in the secular world is described by “If the person that you want to fuck is cute, and rich and desired by others then, like, you’re in love."
To make sure that it's true love and not just infatuation, look for telltale signs of love like, possessive, controlling behaviours, or the sometimes hard to recognise greed / need / lust combination. True love the kind promoted by celebrities is jealous and obsessive and absent of the freedom promoted by the religious. Of course love is sex but most of all true secular love is based on impulse and defies all rational self-control. Really all you need to find love in the secular world is to be emotionally stunted and sexually disoriented.
Probably ten years ago, or so, I was riding with a couple staff to a meeting when a certain song came on the radio. With a “Oh I love this song” she turned it up. It was that song “Every where you go. Every move you make, every breath you take, I’ll be watching you.” A love song, Pfft!
I mentioned that it sounded like a theme song for stalkers. This mental health counsellor, for the first time, saw that song in a light other than obsession = love.
At this very moment my four-year-old is down stairs singing to Band Hero, “Do you want to be my lover . . .”
I could never be a disc jockey forcing / indoctrinating the most vulnerable among us with secular values.
Heard Across the Isle
As the wheels locked into place and the plane banked to the right as it climbed through the clouds, the middle-aged man across the isle from me asked the attractive women seated next to him, “So where do you call home, sweetheart?”
Attractive women: “I’m working out of Saskatoon but my home is Heaven.”
Silence.
:-)
I used to have a list of all the references in the Bible describing us as aliens and strangers on earth.
Grrrr - can’t find it. Yet this woman was correct. All of us are just passing through. I’ve been assigned a task to complete during my brief stay on earth and when it’s finished, I’m going home.
Attractive women: “I’m working out of Saskatoon but my home is Heaven.”
Silence.
:-)
I used to have a list of all the references in the Bible describing us as aliens and strangers on earth.
Grrrr - can’t find it. Yet this woman was correct. All of us are just passing through. I’ve been assigned a task to complete during my brief stay on earth and when it’s finished, I’m going home.
Spoken Like A True Atheist
Ablogger shared these words of atheist wisdom with me.
“Human beings are valuable - as long as they are valued by others.”
From an atheist’s perspective, truer words were never spoken. ‘Humans have value as long as someone values them,’ and the rest can be, and are thrown away by the tens of millions on a yearly basis.
February 7 / 09 - MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- A doctor's license was revoked Friday in the case of a teenager who planned to have an abortion but instead gave birth to a baby she says was killed when clinic staffers put it into a plastic bag and threw it in the trash. The baby’s mother alleges in her suit that "she witnessed the murder of her daughter" and said she "sustained severe emotional distress, shock and psychic trauma which have resulted in discernible bodily injury."A clinic co-owner entered the room and used a pair of shears to cut the baby's umbilical cord, the suit said. She "then scooped up the baby and placed the live baby, placenta and afterbirth in a red plastic biohazard bag, which she sealed, and then threw bag and the baby in a trash can."
So the baby, whom the mother didn’t value one second before, suddenly became valuable when she could see it. What wasn’t murder to her one second before, felt like murder one second later. What became murder for the mother did not seem like murder to the clinic workers. Subjective morality. This is the life that atheists want for you and for me.
"Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need . We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock." Margaret Sanger, Birth Control Review.
The unwanted, the inconvenient, the undervalued, the ugly, the poor, the wretched, the pitiful. The most helpless and hopeless of our world are by and large left to the vultures. All the people that Jesus told us to serve as though they were our superior, those of an atheistic mind-set discard as being beyond useless.
From conception to natural death, Christians believe that all humans have value because we are all created in the image of God. Because of this, Christians find it abhorrent when atheists defend Stalin and Marx while tearing down Mother Theresa.
"Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race." Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company.
Christians find it repugnant when atheists ridicule and mock those who love others not in spite of, but because of their wretchedness. Atheists however see no problem with their inverted value system because Stalin et al. advanced the human species by getting rid of the weak and unwanted, especially those who were unwanted because they were Christians.
"Eugenics is the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems. Margaret Sanger. "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control." Birth Control Review
Unlike atheists, those who work in Mission Hospitals, Shelters, Orphanages, Food Distribution Programs etc. actually value the humble, the meek, the weak and the rejected.
“Human beings are valuable - as long as they are valued by others.”
If there is one sentence that summarizes the atheistic world-view, that might well be the most succinct. If today’s atheist doesn’t adapt to changing styles, s/he too will lose value. In the cold-hearted world of atheism, the philosophy of survival of the fittest watches and waits its chance to pounce with an unblinking eye.
“Human beings are valuable - as long as they are valued by others.”
From an atheist’s perspective, truer words were never spoken. ‘Humans have value as long as someone values them,’ and the rest can be, and are thrown away by the tens of millions on a yearly basis.
February 7 / 09 - MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- A doctor's license was revoked Friday in the case of a teenager who planned to have an abortion but instead gave birth to a baby she says was killed when clinic staffers put it into a plastic bag and threw it in the trash. The baby’s mother alleges in her suit that "she witnessed the murder of her daughter" and said she "sustained severe emotional distress, shock and psychic trauma which have resulted in discernible bodily injury."A clinic co-owner entered the room and used a pair of shears to cut the baby's umbilical cord, the suit said. She "then scooped up the baby and placed the live baby, placenta and afterbirth in a red plastic biohazard bag, which she sealed, and then threw bag and the baby in a trash can."
So the baby, whom the mother didn’t value one second before, suddenly became valuable when she could see it. What wasn’t murder to her one second before, felt like murder one second later. What became murder for the mother did not seem like murder to the clinic workers. Subjective morality. This is the life that atheists want for you and for me.
"Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need . We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock." Margaret Sanger, Birth Control Review.
The unwanted, the inconvenient, the undervalued, the ugly, the poor, the wretched, the pitiful. The most helpless and hopeless of our world are by and large left to the vultures. All the people that Jesus told us to serve as though they were our superior, those of an atheistic mind-set discard as being beyond useless.
From conception to natural death, Christians believe that all humans have value because we are all created in the image of God. Because of this, Christians find it abhorrent when atheists defend Stalin and Marx while tearing down Mother Theresa.
"Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race." Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company.
Christians find it repugnant when atheists ridicule and mock those who love others not in spite of, but because of their wretchedness. Atheists however see no problem with their inverted value system because Stalin et al. advanced the human species by getting rid of the weak and unwanted, especially those who were unwanted because they were Christians.
"Eugenics is the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems. Margaret Sanger. "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control." Birth Control Review
Unlike atheists, those who work in Mission Hospitals, Shelters, Orphanages, Food Distribution Programs etc. actually value the humble, the meek, the weak and the rejected.
“Human beings are valuable - as long as they are valued by others.”
If there is one sentence that summarizes the atheistic world-view, that might well be the most succinct. If today’s atheist doesn’t adapt to changing styles, s/he too will lose value. In the cold-hearted world of atheism, the philosophy of survival of the fittest watches and waits its chance to pounce with an unblinking eye.
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