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Friday, March 22, 2013

They're Coming to Take it Away Ha-Ha!


"the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property"

"In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend."

The shocking quotations above from Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto reveal what progressives and the left have sought to keep quietly under wraps since the beginning.  In the cause of "fairness", their intention is to do away with distinct and cherished property rights for every individual.   

But this goal of theirs will involve "stealing."   In order to achieve the Marxist or leftist utopia, they must employ force in the removal of property from one in order to give it to another.

In this, they come directly against an ideal formulated not last week, last year or the last generation, not even with our founding fathers, but in the very foundation of the human experience itself, in fact in the ancient writings of Moses:  "thou shall not steal" - Exodus 20:15.    

The principle stands etched in stone as an abiding moral axiom which assumes at least these three ideas:

-Existence of private property
-Legitimacy of its pursuit (origin of the "Protestant work ethic")
-Consequequences if violated 

The struggle for this principle, the conflict between Marx and liberty has cost some 100 million valuable human lives in just the last century alone - ever since nations bagan to play with ideas generated in a single document written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.  

Can we please see these lives as something more than a statistic, and use the sorrow to fuel our fight? 

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But how often do we consider "thou shall not steal"  as a foundation in our current fight for freedom?   We commonly just have have three levels of conscious formative consideration in the fight for freedom:

-Our current circumstances - we don't want to lose what we have.  While we are motivated to share, consider the poor, etc, we do NOT want government forcing our hand.
-Founding Fathers - this is our country.  The country we built, our Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence.  It's how our country is supposed to behave.
-God's clear directive: "Thou shall not steal", respect toward other's private ownership of things.

As the place of God erodes in our culture, the sanctity of private property rights does as well, and down we go.  Consequently our work ethic will continue to be replaced by the delusion of entitlement - a nation of unmotivated, hyper-dependent slaves dancing around cherished Marxian concepts.

If history affords us an opportunity to fix it, the true origin and author of private property and free markets must be honored in a new, resurgent way.

This time (as in the early Christian church), we must join a spirit of charity with private property rights, lest we once again smother by our greed, a well-founded, well loved and workable political framework - free market capitalism.  Marxism is simply not an option.

The state will never take the place of God, in our thinking at least.

"Thou shalt not steal" - and that means you, whoever you are.





Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Jesus - Historical Revisionist or Lord of the Narrative?

In Philippians, chapter 2, Paul weaves together a crucial piece of the eternal meta-narrative with threads of the divine and human.

"...though he was in the form of God...and being found in human form..." (Philippians 2:6-8).

Christ stepped into the narrative of man, and re-wrote it according to logos, for to Him it was but self-expression.

Since Him, everything has changed. He lived a significance of vast, eternal dimension. In fact in Him, all becomes "meta-dimensional" and explodes into mystery - at some inevitable point.

Amazingly (but understandably) He measured everything according to Himself. Everything was determined, measured from "the cornerstone", (Matthew 12:10, cf Ephesians 2:20).

He was the baseline of meaning.

All things have a logos-relative depth of meaning. Question is, do we perceive it?

If so, that's what constitutes our vision. If not, we're still just dealing with "stuff" - His stuff. And it can be dangerous to detach theory from reality, so there is need for caution. Because it is chained to and has one foot in transcendence, mere spiritual knowledge "puffs up."

Vision causes the heavens to explode. Not to mention our Bibles.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

The Stifling Tendency of Atheism and Dawkin's Math Problem

To atheists the concept of a god is a straightjacket; narrowing, restrictive, or like a room with an impossibly low ceiling. To finally throw off the shackles and dismiss the god concept is for them to come home, to finally breathe, to finally have a reason to exist.

Quick to deny God as a generic concept, they make the blunder of dismissing Jesus as a completely frivolous attachment. Yet in Jesus the universe of all god concepts explodes into a metaphysical expansiveness that eliminates the possibility of even thinking in terms of "walls", "stifling low things above and especially straightjackets. The "logos" concepts that come with Jesus add stunning breadth, dimension and definition to the god concept.

Not to mention other vital little aspects such as love and forgiveness (Divine and human). As relentlessly self-conscious beings, (unselfconsciously possessing moral awareness) this stuff would seem to come in pretty handy for an atheist.

So bring Him into the debate. He's already here after all. In fact He defines debate itself.

Instead, Mr atheist feels he must labor breathlessly on.

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For me to be an atheist would just be way too narrow, too restrictive. It really is faith to conclude there is no god - anywhere. Yes, atheists are quick to affirm that they are just serious doubters, not permanent concluders. But their actions speak otherwise.

Drain the venom, cool down, sober up and let's talk. Sorry Christopher Hitchens, your cool, suave cleverness betrayed an impassioned little-boy urgency. Many atheists (eg, Gordon Stein, Alex Rosenberg) wear their burden upon their sleeve. You hid yours behind a glass, ice clinking, dismissive smirk.

Gosh I wish I could have had a discussion with you before you...

...died. Sorry.

I for one as a lover of freedom, must go beyond such narrow confines, always urgent to insist that atheists DO (somehow) have a foundation for morality, denials of fideism, definitions of true atheism, the urgency to ridicule, the deification (irony!) of reason, etc.

Whew! Hard work! And for one thing, I just don't have the energy!

Or maybe I'm just lazy. Jesus does offer rest after all - spiritual, if not in the end mental also, while remaining the most eternally significant, engaging and challenging of all lives ever lived.

But the atheistic is always squirming, busily setting up straw men that he can shoot down, or dragging poor 'ol modern American Christianity in as its debate partner. C'mon, you sneaky little boy! Just a cursory consideration admits that essential Christianity and modern American traditional Christianity are two very different things.

And by the way, we HAVE seen what an atheist state looks like. Dark, hollowed out, low ceilinged, democidal. Mr. Dawkins with all your smarts, you really can't count can you?

And you're not really serious are you? Please.

It takes a far bigger revisionist eraser than you have to wipe from history your Karl, Joseph, Fidel, Che, Chairman Mao, Pol, etc.

Yea, we've heard it before, "but we're different, we're nice atheists."

Don't even go there. You're smarter than that.

Own it and calm down. We reject your laborious fabrications, as well as your ideas of an atheist state.

We prefer life.