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Saturday, January 19, 2013

Are We on Autopilot? Or How to Re-elect a Socialist President in a Free Nation

When America awakened on the morning of November 7 to find that she had re-elected for a second term, the most aggressively socialistic president of our time, an apparent majority of the citizenry seemed quite satisfied. But there were many, many folk who felt as though the bottom of all things had just fallen through, that we as a nation would never be the same, and questions arose as to whether we could even endure this turn of events as a unified nation.

How Is it possible, many thought, that we a free nation could re-elect a Socialist for a second term, especially given the "progress" his leftist agenda had made over the first four years of his presidency?

Much of the answer to this question seems to be a condition not unfamiliar to man as he has endured such seasons of apparent economic disparity and arising demandingness of the disenfranchised.

In the ancient writings of Asaph, one of the authors of the book of Psalms in the Old Testament, the writer autobiographically provides us with a striking example of how this spirit works in the heart of man. Using his own experience as a case study, the writer with remarkable candidness and self-deprecating honesty describes to us his two completely divergent frames of mind and how they contrasted with each other, all triggered by this dilemma of apparent unfairness in life between the "haves" and the "have-nots". His two contrasting frames of mind can be described as "non-reflective" on the one hand versus "reflective" on the other.

The non-reflective observations of the Psalmist are what he describes in phrases such as "I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked", (v. 3), "Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies", (v. 7), "Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches", (v. 12). Asaph was perturbed, petulant and envious of those who seemed to have everything life had to offer.

In other words, he looked out at the world around him and he grew increasingly disturbed by what he felt was an inequality of distribution, advantage and resources in society, and this unsettled spirit churned deep within - kind of like it did with Karl Marx, or the uncertain majority of Americans in November, 2012. This spirit was something that encroached as night does the day, subtly, non-reflectively all the while discounting and unselfconsciously minimizing the value of noble qualities such as freedom, liberty and prosperity in a free society.

This mindset can be further characterized by familiar idioms such as "asleep at the wheel" or "going on autopilot". We imagine the case as sort of the "Joe six-pack" mentality, beer in hand, on the couch with his buddies, watching "the game", almost an unconsciousness of the self as human, noble and created in the image of God - the spirit of the instinct, reactive, stimulus-response type of thing. Such a dumbing-down of the reflective processes of the intellect is akin to lowering the noble character of man to that of an animal or beast. In fact the writer uses this exact notion when he says in verse 22, "I was like a beast before you".

Contrasted to this is the reflective, or awakened mindset he describes when he "comes to himself" or better yet when he "comes into the house of God" (v. 17) or into the thought processes of his God, as opposed to his own. In other words, Asaph had "an awakening". He saw the folly of his non-reflective perturbations and renounced himself while he was under this delusional mindset.

The best seasons of any nation, any culture are when they are "awake", thoughtful, creative, productive and truly alive. Such was the case in the early days of our great nation. Men fresh from awakening the slumber of tyranny arose to craft a nation of awakened, courageous citizens. Contrast this for example, to the Germans of the 1930's who slept themselves, enslaved themselves into the national nightmare of Naziism, a collective unselfconscious societal cancer which the noble German people will always have as a blight on their national heritage. Such also is the America that crowned it's Socialist president once again on November 6, 2012.

When in a non-reflective, beast-level, autopilot mindset, the two primary characteristics are slumber and sudden reaction. We sleep until like a dog disturbed, we react with an angry, irrational, almost unconscious petty and bitter vengeance. So also a non-reflective parent is often an abusive parent, demanding his or her "space" until the poor child without any warning becomes the victim of the disengaged parent's snap reaction. So has the left "snapped" suddenly and irrationally against freedoms, like our 2nd Amendment rights. This non-reflective mass reaction is what is fueling the wave of leftism that is crashing over our nation at this hour. We are either asleep, or reactionary or both at the same time, (think of the "Occupy" movement). We do not know what we are doing, nor where we are heading. The cliff looms ahead and we fail to see it because of our slumber and our irrational, immature demands that things be "fair".

The remedy for this: First, awakening, v. 20, "like a dream when one awakes..." In other words to pinch ourselves out of the slumber of non-reflectiveness, and into the light of day, of true consciousness. Has "fairness" versus freedom ever worked? Security over liberty? Do we not see the predictable results of Marxism wherever it has been implemented? Are we blind to the ugly oppression and delusion of North Korea, Soviet Russia and the other efforts at a Marxist utopia? Yes, these are examples in the extreme, but it's all the same path, the path we are now on as a nation, and it is not the path envisioned at the founding of our nation.

The second part of the remedy is to get proper perspective, such as the Psalmist did when he "went into the house of God". We simply are not smart enough or big enough to figure the thing out on our own. We get lost in the delusion of our momentary desires, and we need to stand on the shoulders of something or rather Someone far bigger than ourselves, Someone who knows the tendencies of the fallen human heart, and who offers us abundant mercy when we finally feel our need of it, our need of Him. Such is the Apostle Paul's urgent cry, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” (Ephesians 5:14). If God grants us mercy, we will so arise before it is too late and our sleep becomes our death.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Why Sandy Hook Happened and Why it Will Soon Happen Again

150 years ago we began as a culture, to entertain the idea that man did not have a distinct ontological purpose and no higher destiny then to be reabsorbed back into the biological mass from which he originally sprang. In such a case, any sense of destiny, purpose, nobility, not to mention eternity, all became pipe-dreams. We were, at the core of our beings, merely some insignificant part of an ecosystem that was by purely materialistic or naturalistic forces, being blindly guided by the impulse of pure chance and utter meaninglessness.

In the course of time we embraced these concepts into the American system of education - a system already tilting toward the left by pragmatist ideologue leaders such as John Dewey - a stepchild of the Hegelian philosophy of the dialectic deeply espoused also by Karl Marx. In the school system we began to teach our children that they had no ultimate destiny and that they were merely part of the cosmic and biological accident that occurred with no meaning, no hope, no reason, no future.

This mindset of course had very predictable effects on the generations that followed until through weakness and abdication of the church on the one hand, and an opportunistic charge by the progressive culture on the other, a fatal, but not unexpected court-decision was made in 1973 legalizing the wanton slaughter of untold millions of lives in what has become a modern-day holocaust. Since then, some 55 million humans each with a unique DNA profile, have been erased as if they were nothing more than unwanted debris. Once again, we boldly and loudly made the statement that life was not created in the image of God, in fact life had no meaning at all, really.

Following suit in the cheapening of life were then both the major motion picture and the computer gaming industries with their relentless parade of blood, death and mayhem with no consequences. Add to this the ubiquitous proliferation of psychotropic drugs over the last ten to twenty years. On March 22, 2004 the FDA published a Public Health Advisory that reiterates several of these side effects and states (in part) "Anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia (severe restlessness), hypomania, and mania have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for other indications, both psychiatric and non-psychiatric."* it is estimated that one in ten people in America are now prescribed SSRIs.

Recall that these drugs are being prescribed to a population who are already disenfranchised from God, who have already been raised in a school system and culture where the life of man is meaningless, who live where babies are wantonly slaughtered just days, weeks or months before they would somehow cross onto that magical realm from unviability to viability.

Then such subjects of this culture of death are handed a gaming device where they can carry out yet more fantasy of mayhem and gore. Now obviously not every child of the gaming culture is a potential mass-murderer, but out of these generations, raised in an atheistic, drug-infested culture there are liable to be those who through some other form of mental instability, cross that line from fantasy to reality, acting out in their own world the dark, psychotic play that has been the ceaseless inner horror movie playing deep within for perhaps years.

That's why we can expect yet another Sandy Hook style shooter in the near future. The odds are against us. Tragically, It is not a matter of "if", but "when."

So in summary, it is not the case that you can point to one phenomenon like the Beatles and Rock 'n Roll in the 60s, the Vietnam War, the hippie culture, the removal of prayer from school etc. etc. as the case for our cultural decline. Rather, these are all symptoms of what really shifted when we began to declare that man was not made in the image of God, a declaration not in fact made as a result of empirical data or proof, but rather as the result of a theory still unproven - a theory which produced an onslaught. By means of the mechanism of the dialectic, what Darwin was doing in biology, Marx was doing with economics. In this, both Atheism and Progressivism have joined forces and are now pouring gasoline on the culture of death in our country. Of course, their knee-jerk reaction is to seize the guns. If they succeed in this, then they have closed the coffin on this chapter of our nation's very existence.

The only obvious answer to this dark reality is for the church of Jesus Christ to finally awaken to both her true identity and her true task.

Because it will not be "if", but "when"





* citing from http://ssristories.com/

Monday, January 14, 2013

Gotcha! The Sneaky Little Surprise Behind Political Correctness

The PC movement thinks it is riding a trending cultural wave of transformational dominance and restructuring when, by it's media-driven power, it makes acceptable what has hitherto been unacceptable in terms of societal norms.

But there's a problem. Their movement lacks the novelty and chic-ness they thought it had. Someone already described their practice and mindset long, long ago depicting the PC movement of every generation in these words: "...they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them." (Romans 1:32). Paul is referring to a collectivized approbation of once-forbidden moral behavior. Culture thinks it's "cool", God saw it coming.

In the larger context of these words is a sad picture of what happens in any society that seeks to throw God "under the buss". There is always a downward spiral of public and societal moral degeneration. But along with that degeneration, is also the swelling cultural perspective of what has become known as "Political Correctness". It is the collective approval of the newly adopted moral norms of a culture in combination with a collective public disapproval of those who differ with them or who retain a God-reflected moral compass.

Recently as I sat in a public waiting area with the ubiquitous raised corner television blaring its mid-day litany of PC noise into the atmosphere it gave me reason to pause and reflect upon that ancient statement, "...they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them." Something seemed ironically familiar.

The host who was gay was bantering and making light about the subject of dating and from time to time he would make a comment about his open gayness. But whenever he did it raised a loud and large applause from the audience. Now I know without a doubt that the entire audience was not, nor could have been made up of entirely homosexual men and women.

But as the camera panned the audience there were virtually no faces that appeared to be uncomfortable or even a little shamed or embarrassed either about the gay comments or in the obvious pride in which they were spoken. They all seemed to be programed in sync with the fact that regret, nor embarrassment, nor any moral hesitation whatsoever was to be expressed in any way over his "gay pride".

The truth is however, there were those who showed or at least felt some moral disdain inside. They just refused to show it outside and risk offending the cresting wave of political correctness that was washing over the audience. If given the opportunity to consider even the rudimentary actions involved in an actual homosexual sexual event, many would recoil in horror. But no horror or shame showed on this day. Political Correctness has shut them down in fear, in a way that would have never happened just twenty or thirty years ago.

But all the PC in the world will never erase the fact that someone, long, long ago saw this movement, pulled open the curtain and surprise, surprise, (!) revealed the folly and the sadness of a culture that "not only does them but gives approval to those who practice them..."