Featured Post

MY NOTES ON 'OLD-TIME MAKERS OF MEDICINE' BY JAMES JOSEPH WALSH, 1911

  First, here is a link to the audio that I listened to, which is free to download: https://librivox.org/old-time-makers-of-medicine-by-jame...

Monday, September 28, 2015

LGBT YOUTH SUICIDE RATES

First, realize that the assertion that gay kids are killing themselves at four times the rate as straight kids are may be a lie put forward to garner sympathy for the gay cause and to convince us to be accepting of a lifestyle that we would rather not accept. Whenever I come across that statistic, there is never any source given to prove it, and comments about other possible contributors to each suicide are not mentioned. So the statistic might be a ruse; and when a gay kid commits suicide, the cause might be a web of concerns that the kid could not see himself overcoming or dealing with: problems like his parents divorcing, poor grades, a puppy-love meltdown, or a general sense of inferiority and unimportance due to a lack of truth in his mind concerning God in heaven and Man’s duty on earth to God. When God might not exist, when heaven might be imaginary, when a monkey might be your ancestor, when you can see no reason to believe in living more than dying, suicide begins to loom over you as an option by which to escape your unhappiness and lack of direction.     

Suppose that it’s true that LGBT youth commit suicide at four times the rate of straight kids. Whether the rate is true or not is not easy to determine. Nevertheless, why do some gay kids commit suicide? Is it because of bullying? Is it because of all the criticism they endure? The bullying they encounter, when they encounter it, is no worse than what bullied kids had to face a generation ago when gays were still in the closet. Do gay kids get bullied today more than fat kids got bullied forty years ago? Are they not celebrated more than bullied? Why do gay kids of our day commit suicide at a greater rate than fat kids of a former day? Here is the reason: because today’s gay kids have less moral sense and less stability in their lives than fat kids had decades ago.  

Are Christian kids killing themselves at a greater rate than other kids? They must not be, or we would be hearing about it, would we not? Who gets bullied and criticized more than Christian kids do? Why aren’t Christian kids killing themselves at as great a rate as gay kids? It is my belief that Christian kids are mostly kids who call themselves Christian, nothing more. I say this because most kids who profess to be Christian grow up to be no more Christian than atheists are. However, the reason they are not killing themselves as often as gay kids do, might be due to the fact that they grow up in a moral community made up of church and home. Christian homes and churches are not very morally upstanding these days, but the little morality they have might be just enough to keep their kids from overdosing on pills or jumping off bridges. The gay community, on the other hand, is a community made up of confused, angry people who push and propagandize. Gays do come together for mutual support. But their favorite ways of coming together are not moral, but immoral; that is, when they come together carnally to participate in orgies or to flaunt their lewd selves before a curious public. 

Dr. Phil says that being gay or lesbian or bisexual is not a fad. But for many, it is a fad; and for many others, it is a fad that would pass quickly away if not for authority figures who labor to fan the fad into a lifestyle. Through cultural pressure and the twisted teachings and advice that come down from brainwashed teachers and parents, what might have been a fad becomes something more; and that something more, because of the confusion and sense of guilt involved, can end in suicide. Things that inquisitive boys and girls used to do at puberty and that would pass away in a year or so are now being legitimized and cultivated through the curriculums in our schools. So what might have been a fad quickly becomes something more, and suicide can be the result. Dr. Phil is not the authority on LGBT psychology. A little sociology and history would help him to figure things out more perfectly. The word of God would help him most of all.   

Oprah Winfrey is no authority on LGBT psychology either; and the ministers whose philosophy she embraces are not theologians. Ministers who claim that being gay is a gift from God are ministers of no one but Satan. Homosexuality is not called a gift from God in Romans 1! Romans 1 does not need the word 'homosexual' to condemn homosexuals and the perversions that homosexuals do! If being alright no matter what happens is what spirituality is, as Oprah stupidly alleges, then why not practice that spirituality, and be alright with Christians who condemn homosexual behavior and who refuse to bake cakes in celebration of gay marriages? True spirituality begins with repentance from sins like homosexuality, and repentance yields acceptance from God. 

It is common among Christians who know they should stand against perverse activities and lifestyles, to lose heart; so they water down the doctrines of sin, judgment, and love. This is what, for example, pastor Tony Scott from the church on Strayer does. God denounces the sin, he says, not the sinner. Let’s test that assertion. When God denounces sin, he is obviously denouncing the person doing the sin; otherwise, he would not tell the sinner to ‘flee fornication,’ as in 1 Corinthians 6.18. If God were denouncing the sin alone, he would command the fornication to flee! If God denounces sin, not the sinner, why did he rain fire and brimstone on the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah? If he denounces the sin alone, how would that even be done and what would it mean? God denounces, not just the sin, but the sinner also. This is why the person, not the sin, must repent in order to be accepted by God. Does God pour his wrath out on sin, while sparing the sinner, as this weak-spined pastor says? What do you call what happened at Sodom and Gomorrah? Was that an instance of wrath coming down on sin, or on sinners? Next, if God loves every person without distinction, as this pastor says and as so many others say, then his love for Abraham was the same as his love for Hitler, and Christians have no better claim on God’s promises than the grossest sinners do. Romans 8 probably contains the strongest statement about how secure the bind is between Christians and the love of God. What are they called in Romans 8? They are called children, heirs, joint-heirs, sheep, and conquerors. Why? Because God’s love is the same for them as it is for everyone else? No, but because God loves everyone benevolently, and his chosen saints especially. To some he gives the bounty of the earth; to others he gives both that and heaven. 

We must not be ashamed to preach and teach without swerving from what the word of God bluntly says. Those who will not inherit the kingdom of God include thieves, drunkards, and idolaters, but also, adulterers, fornicators, effeminate persons, and abusers of themselves with mankind (1 Corinthians 6.9, 10.) In other words, those who don’t sober up, those who won’t quit stealing, those who love their idols in the place of God, those who cheat on their spouses, those who sleep around, those who participate in homosexual behavior, will not inherit the kingdom of God and will not see heaven except from a place of torment. This is an old message; it is still the message that our kids need to hear, whether LGBT behavior is a fad for them, whether it is their chosen identity, or whether they are professing to be Christian in the face of the rampant perversities that are being foisted on their developing minds and bodies. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”—this is what must be urged, no matter how much ridicule the command draws from some obstinate sinners. To repent toward God and to trust in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for sin is the only way to heaven for any who will get there. To the Corinthian Christians that Paul warns not to continue in sin, he adds, “and such were some of you” (1 Corinthians 6.11.) Some of them had been thieves and some of them had been practicing perverts. Repentance and faith leading to acceptance with God was possible for them; it is possible for any kid who will repent and believe today. The message of repentance from sin and faith in Jesus is infinitely better than what kids are being told now: that we evolved from the dirt and through primates, that God might not exist and that if he does he might be an impersonal careless force, and that it’s fine to dabble in activities that make you feel unnatural, uncomfortable, guilty, and exposed to the displeasure of God. No matter how good a sin feels, a sinner will endure pangs in his conscience and he will wonder at where the shame that he feels ultimately comes from. It comes, ultimately, from God, who created the conscience. The conscience, though, because it is negatively affected by sin, can become insensitive to sinning. The command to repent, then, is a command that should be obeyed right away, before the conscience ends up giving a green light to an even faster highway to hell than the sinner is presently on.    

This has been a Puritanical opinion on suicide rates among LGBT youth. 

Saturday, September 26, 2015

AN 'EVANGELICAL' MAYOR PROCLAIMS GAY PRIDE WEEK IN A 'BIBLE-BELT'

In the absence of evidence to the contrary, especially in light of the fact that no controversy has erupted, I will be assuming, in this article, that our mayor has proclaimed in favor of gay pride week.

The word evangelical must be put into quotes when referring to our mayor and the church that she attends. Our mayor, the photogenic Tara Veer, by proclaiming gay pride week on August 14th, 2015, tacitly proclaimed against her profession of faith. Maybe she believes, like so many politicians, lawyers, and judges do, that her faith is private and should be kept out of the political sphere. But even over at the limp, lifeless, spiritless church that she attends, you may hear the pastor say that spiritual life should permeate the whole of a Christian’s walk. They all say that. Did the pastor remind her of this principle? Does God judge anyone as a dual entity? Will God divide persons on judgment day in order to judge their private lives in distinction from their public lives? You might escape controversy in this world by dividing your life up into parts. But if you do that, in the next world you will be judged for having been a coward in the face of controversy. That is exactly what the Bible teaches, and straight from Jesus Christ: “Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels” (Mark 8.38.) Did the mayor receive this reminder from her pastor after she proclaimed to the city that perversity is okay? Is he a real ‘living stone’ if he did not? If he did not, is he not just as cowardly as she is?

John the Baptist reproved Herod for his sexual indiscretions (Luke 3.19) and was beheaded for his boldness. Our mayor, instead of reproving wickedness, proclaims it to go ahead, even though no one would have suffered one hair from her golden head to be plucked out if she had refused. The girl has not the heart that we were hoping she had. It’s just a guess, but maybe the mayor can’t be too quick to judge because by doing so her own indiscretions might be hauled into view.   

God will not cut you any slack on the basis that you proclaimed in favor of evil just professionally. R. L. Dabney addresses this very issue in his brilliant essay, Morality of the Legal Profession. “Let every man rest assured,” he warns, “that God’s claims over his moral creatures are absolutely inevitable. He will not be cheated of satisfaction to his outraged law by the plea that the wrong was done professionally” (Discussions, Volume 3, p. 232.)

It is a serious matter for a mayor to proclaim in favor of wickedness, especially one who claims to be a Christian, and who attends a church that the city regards as evangelical. God will hold her accountable, and not just for sinning against her own conscience. People, kids most notably, look up to a pretty young mayor, and if she proclaims in favor of gay activities, they will be swayed by her proclamation. The mayor will have to answer to God for this too. Had she refused to do the proclamation, that would have been a check on what a celebrity like Kristin Chenoweth says, who I’m sure that the kids know much about. Kristin claims to be a Christian, and according to her ‘personal faith,’ it’s important for Christians to support ‘marriage equality,’ by which she means, gay marriage. So the mayor will have to answer to God for not being a tower of strength between hypocritical celebrities and impressionable kids. But there is more. (The bit about Chenoweth comes from the Friday Forward, August 28th, 2015.)  

From the same essay by Dabney: “There is no lesson of experience clearer than this, that the habit of advocating what is not thoroughly believed to be right, perverts the judgment and obfuscates the conscience, until they become unreliable…Now, it is a fearful thing to tamper thus with the faculties which are to regulate our moral existence, and decide our immortal state. It may not be done with impunity. Truth has her sanctities; and if she sees them dishonored, she will hide her vital beams from the eyes which delighted to see error dressed in her holy attributes, until the reprobate mind is given over to delusions, to believe lies” (pp. 235, 236.) The proof of this proposition is found, fittingly, in Romans 1, right where homosexual relations are condemned more strongly than anywhere else in all of Scripture. God turned the perverts of old over to a reprobate mind because they did not want to retain the knowledge of God (Romans 1.28.) Be careful mayor, be careful Mr. Pastor (who should have reproved her and cut her off from the church for her own good), your refusal to retain the knowledge of God leads to you being turned over to a reprobate mind: a mind cast away by God as being worthless. That’s what it means. Instead of God enlightening you, he will cast your mind into darkness so that you will believe in things that will damn your soul.

If the mayor had stood firm against doing the proclamation, most of the churches, as non-theological and fearful as they are, would have stood by her, I think. Perversity, then, might have been blocked just a bit. At the least, it would have been censured. I did not hear of any pastor or church group protesting gay pride week and the vile events connected with it. The churchgoers of this city do not realize that their unconcern, fear, and cowardice in the face of evil are nouns that witness to what state they are in spiritually, which is a state lacking sanctity and maybe salvation. They love to speak of revivals and to predict them. Revivals, for their information, are generated through Christians who are so alive to God’s truth that they confront error and evil no matter if the city gets turned upside down on account of their righteous stand against what God condemns. Our mayor is a hypocrite; our churches are dead; our pastors are half-blind men leading great swaths of ignorant citizens into ditches—ditches that wind swiftly downward toward hell.

Since I wrote this article, I have read that maybe it was the deputy-mayor that did the actual proclamation. This does not alter anything I have said because when a deputy-mayor does an official proclamation, it is done in the name of the mayor’s office and at the behest of the mayor herself. Indeed, if the mayor appointed her deputy to do the dirty work, that is even worse than if she had done it herself, for by delegating her deputy to do the proclamation, she caused another person to sin on her behalf, which is to pile sin upon sin. And it is just another species of cowardice that she will have to answer to God for.

This has been a Puritanical opinion on a so-called Christian mayor who proclaimed in favor of gay pride week in a so-called Bible-belt. 

Saturday, September 19, 2015

THE CHARACTER OF THE LGBT MOVEMENT

I am going to show how to apply a passage of Scripture on this subject in just a few minutes, although I will not do so exhaustively.  

In the principal New Testament passage dealing with homosexual perverts and perversions, God describes the character of what today is known as the LGBT community. What are the folks like who make up this movement? Do we believe the word of God? Do we believe the word of God to be relevant? Then here is what these folks are like: from Romans 1.29-31: “Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful.” This is the longest string of sins that you will find named in the Bible. It is not a coincidence that the longest divine rap sheet is leveled at the most perverse, promiscuous segment of our population. Like all people, queer persons do some things that we can admire. But notice that God does not mention any of that here. He is not looking at that; he is not considering that; he focuses on the sins; and that is what preachers ought to do. 

All of these sins apply to the LGBT crowd, no matter how they present themselves on sitcoms, talk shows, movies, reality dramas, and in your families and churches. Without doing any fresh research at all, but from the memory of what I have read and heard, I will apply some of the twenty-three negative characteristics that are mentioned in the passage I just read.

Are they filled with fornication? The average homosexual is about as promiscuous as a rooster in a henhouse. That is the only answer as to how AIDS became so widespread among gays at such a rapid rate. It is common knowledge among those who are gay or those who care to look into the matter, that it is not unusual for a homosexual to receive or service many partners during one single orgy. Documentaries that are homosexual-friendly unabashedly admit this. The rakish lifestyle that led to Freddie Mercury’s death is a way of life that the homosexual naturally gravitates to; that which is perverse in nature will veer into a risky, chaotic, dangerous course. A tornado does not touch down but to wreak disorder and destruction; a homosexual does not engage in unnatural, unholy acts without causing bedlam and injury.      

Are they filled with murder? Even while infected and knowing it, gays commonly engage in sex, often without the little protection that a condom will provide, and it is not uncommon for them to act thus without warning their serial partners that they could become infected by the wicked acts they are about to partake in. You can check out the documentaries on that; gays freely admit the truth of what I have just said. Again, careless unrestraint with a view to slaking lust is what put AIDS on cruise control during those early years.

Are they proud? They have the ‘whore’s forehead’ of Jeremiah 3.3, which they tilt back in lewd defiance during every gay pride parade. Who can look at a gay pride parade without being disgusted and shocked? Indeed, people gather in order to gawk at the gaudy display as if it were some kind of horror show. The queers go on parade in order to flaunt their indecency. What kind of attitude is that but the attitude of a proud whore?  

Are they inventors of evil things? Hospital staff members are well acquainted with their evil inventions, which they regularly have to get medically extracted. My own aunt worked on such a ward in Vancouver. So I have gotten this anecdote first-hand from a reliable source. Let’s say no more about that characteristic, and try to be ‘innocent concerning evil.’

Are they covenant-breakers? A word has been coined by a gay man to whitewash the failures among gays to be monogamous. The word for his particular species of pseudo-monogamy is ‘monogamish.’ You can’t be faithful to your favorite; maybe you can be monogamish instead of monogamous. To be a covenant-breaker in the gay world is the norm.

Next, are they implacable? The ones who chose to single out the Christian baker for the wedding cake they wanted, are implacable, which means: ‘not capable of being appeased.’ They would rather make that baker go out of business for refusing to bake a gay cake than to walk across the street to get the cake made by a libertine. In truth, had the Christian baked the cake, the homosexuals would have thrown it out because gays like to bake their own cakes. The whole thing was a ruse and a snare in order to persecute the Christian faith. We know that gays in general are just like that implacable gay couple because they do not protest the injustice going on within their own ranks.

Are they haters of God? Surf through the gay channels on youtube as I have done, and you will witness every twist and turn imaginable to make the Bible say the opposite of what it states about homosexual perversities. The word of God is squarely and clearly against LGBT culture and practice, and here is its verdict: “they which commit such things are worthy of death” (Romans 1.32.) Whatever death a homosexual undergoes, whether by AIDS, old age, or accident, it has been decreed by God to be a particularly well-deserved death on account of abominable deeds. It was God’s good pleasure to take thousands of homosexuals out of this world through their gay activities. God allowed AIDS to be introduced by whatever means, and he let gay lust take care of the rest. Romans 1.24 and 26 speak along those lines: “Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves…For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections.” There is no better commentary anywhere about the nature and purpose of AIDS in the gay sectors of North America. It is the Authoritative Commentary, straight from heaven from Almighty God.

Only by the purest Man, Christ Jesus, can the most impure men and women be cleansed and then saved from what the Bible calls the second death, a place and state where unrepentant persons, in both body and soul, will be judged by God to endure an eternity of torment on account of the daring, damnable sins that they brazenly committed on earth for as little as a decade, a year, one month, one week, one day, or one illicit sexual encounter. It’s a hard truth. It’s grim. It’s awful. It may be inconceivable. But the irrevocable word of God cannot be honestly interpreted any other way.

That word of God, moreover, declares woe unto every pastor who is too cowardly to preach God’s word line upon line without blurring its obvious meaning. “Woe is unto me,” the apostle Paul said, “if I preach not the gospel!” (1 Corinthians 9.16.) If Paul gave himself this warning, he meant to apply the same warning to every person holding a ministerial office. It should be obvious that the gospel cannot be faithfully preached unless the reason for the gospel is explained. The Good News of the gospel makes no sense without the bad news of sin because it is sin that makes the gospel understandable and necessary. You don’t need good news unless bad news is hanging over your head. That bad news is condemnation on account of sin, and perdition for the unrepentant.  

All kinds of sinners will go to hell in the end. This is true. But pastors are so afraid of being accused of homophobia these days, that they are underemphasizing the most perverse sins in order to avoid the least offence. It is not wise, in the face of aggressive, increasing perversity, to glaze over the sins that God himself has so forcefully reprehended by word and deed. LGBT persons commit a whole alphabet of sins that cry up to God for judgment. Acceptance, tolerance, church membership—none of this will help any one of them get one step farther from sin nor one step closer to heaven. An approach that treats unsaved wicked sinners as though they were right with God is to throw a cloud on their need of grace. Dialogue might get some farther from sin; but dialogue, as genteel as it can be, will not get anyone closer to heaven, not unless it leads to an application of some means of grace, like diligent, unbiased Bible reading. Queer persons must be told the blunt, unvarnished truth, and it is okay to get preachy about it: continuing in perversity is a one-way ticket to hell. Turning from perversity is the only way to the cross, and the cross is the only way of saving faith. If a person dies believing that a perverse lifestyle is okay—if a person dies embracing what God abhors—that person dies in his sins; and whosoever dies in his sins will never be recovered from the bowels of hell. From perversity and wicked deeds to repentance and faith via the sacrifice for sinners by Jesus on the cross—that, and that alone, will be the door of admission into Paradise.

If a liar or a drunkard or a thief cannot make it to heaven without walking away from sin and turning to Jesus in faith, how much more must this be the case for those who commit the most unnatural, abominable acts known to God, man, and history?

This has been a Puritanical opinion on the character of the LGBT movement. 

Friday, September 18, 2015

SHOULD VIOLENCE BY WOMEN BE TABOO?

I like to do two things at once whenever I can, for the Bible urges Christians to redeem the time. Not only do I shave while I cook, but I brush up on my French at the same time as I keep up with what radical feminists are up to. So to keep my French from getting too rusty and to stay informed on what leftist radicals are doing, I listen to a program on CBC Radio called, Plus on est de fous, plus on lit! This may be translated as, The more we play the fool, the more we read. I get that they are trying to be lighthearted and funny by a title like that, especially since it seems to be a spin on the proverb that says, ‘Plus on est de fous, plus on rit,’ which may be translated as, ‘The more we play the fool, the more we laugh.’ But my commentary on one of their episodes will show that their foolish play is not followed by much wisdom through the reading of many good books. If playing the fool leads these hosts and their guests to read, it must lead them to read foolish books indeed! Rather than play the fool before they read, they should pray to God for guidance on what to read. Rather than read on the basis of tomfoolery, they should read in order to become wise.

Sometimes an episode or other of Plus on est de fous, plus on lit! is so foolhardy that I am compelled to take notes while I listen. I did that on June 17th, 2015. On that day these silly radio talkers were discussing whether violence by women is still taboo or not. ‘Tabou’ is one of the frequent buzz words they use on CBC Radio French, second only to the filler word, ‘effectivement,’ which they throw into nearly every sentence for no reason at all. On the face of it, what they mean by violence by women being taboo or not is this: is violence by women still socially unacceptable? Asking the question is relevant enough in light of the fact that women are becoming less and less feminine and more and more brutish in our increasingly heathen society. Has it become socially acceptable for women to be violent? That’s a good question to discuss and to address. But the tone, insinuation, and broader context of this episode show that their view is that whatever is taboo should not be taboo—that whatever is unacceptable should be acceptable instead. Their question really is, not ‘is violence by women taboo?’—but ‘should violence by women be taboo?’ They seem to bewail the fact that ‘kamikaze’ women (‘kamikaze’ being the French expression for ‘suicide bomber’) are few in number! Should violence by women be taboo? They want violence by women to be more acceptable—more the norm, because they do not like stereotypes! They don’t want violence by women to be atypical or unusual or shocking. They seem to be genuinely relieved and elated even, that at least some of the suicide bombers have been women. Women can be anything but decent, feminine, and gentle these days, it seems. Today’s woman commits the ultimate sin by being, or staying, good.

Women who want the quiet, modest stereotype to disappear are feminists of the most radical stamp. For example, on this same episode one of the men made the big mistake of saying that a certain movement was waiting for ‘his man,’ which is just an expression that means the movement is waiting for its right leader to come on the scene. Expressions that have long been considered generic, however, better be expressed in the female gender, as this man was hotly reminded of as soon as the expression slipped out of his careless mouth. Feminists who are this radical—radical enough to crave it to be more acceptable for women to be violent, will not let any expression cross their path without it passing the dictatorial feminist test. “Always the man, always the man,” this woman cried, as soon as the one sitting beside her slipped up by speaking normally and traditionally.

So there you have an inside look at what goes on at Plus on est fous, plus on lit, a program steeped in the bowels of the most left wing French people in Canada who read and write the most base, radical, subversive books available for consumption. Should violence by women be taboo? All violence should be taboo, especially violence by the gender that is by nature the most nurturing. Far from being boisterous and violent, women should strive to adopt what the apostle Paul says is the ideal: virtues like modesty and subjection (1 Timothy 2.) Of course, women on this program and on CBC in general are not going to value what the Bible says. Even most women who claim to love the Bible would rush to defend these feminist radicals if they came across this obscure article of mine. It would be foolish for any woman who pretends to love the Bible, however, to say that virtues like modesty and subjection only pertain to a woman’s conduct in church twenty centuries ago. That would be the same as saying that God wants women to be vain and balky today, which is ridiculous and which the Bible nowhere endorses. The virtues that women are supposed to peculiarly exemplify are enforced by two historical facts: Eve was created second; and she, not Adam, was deceived by Satan (1 Timothy 2.13, 14.) The folks at The more we play the fool, the more we read, ought to burn their corrupting novels just as certain converts in Ephesus burned their books of ‘curious arts’ (Acts 19.19); and then they  should reach for their Bibles to renew their minds with. No doubt they have Bibles, though they must be the kind that people keep for show and that gather, instead of notes in their margins, inches of dust on their covers.

This has been a Puritanical opinion about CBC Radio’s opinion that violence by women should not be taboo, but more acceptable instead. 

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

HUNCHES AND PROFILING

The war on cops is ramping up in America; it is not likely to slow down until a new president is elected who will speak for justice and peace instead of racist grievances that are either made up or no longer relevant. President Obama can still do a lot of damage after he retires to play golf and deliver Marxist speeches. But at least then his voice will be in the background, and as such, won’t sway as much as it does now. It is not easy to keep up with the incidents of cops being shot by black thugs; in a better world it would be hard to keep up with all the black thugs being outdrawn or put behind bars.

More cops are being targeted than ever before because of how the president and his spokesmen qualify their appeals for peace; that is, when they even make such appeals. They qualify their words so much that even the most illiterate black thug can tell that they want violence to increase instead of decrease. Sometimes they don’t even try to hide the racist fires they are trying to keep going or start. Joe Biden warned the blacks that the republicans want to put them back in chains! “They’re going to put y’all back in chains.” That is what he said as a vice-president running for a second term under Barack Obama! Who believes that the republicans want to put black people back in chains? No one does. Black thugs take it as an invitation to kill and riot. Obama still speaks of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown as if the facts proved that each one did not get what he deserved and that the courts judged them in the spirit of the Ku Klux Klan!

 Because the cops are not being supported by federal, or even regional, politicians in some cases, they are hesitating to use their best tools for zoning in on bad guys. Profiling is one of their best tools. If raccoons were getting into your garbage every weekend, you would profile them; if weasels were eating your hens at night, you would profile them. If a black person is a known drug dealer, you should profile him. If a Muslim is known to have communicated with terrorists, you should profile him.

The hunch is another indispensable tool. If you had a hunch that a skunk was eating your eggs before you could gather them, you would follow up on it. If you had a hunch that a relative was molesting your daughter, you would follow up on it. If you’ve got a hunch that a black person wearing a hoodie is up to no good, you should follow up on it. If you’ve got a hunch that a Muslim is boarding a bus with evil intent, you should follow up on it. Cops must be allowed to act as the rest of us act. We all profile and we all follow up on hunches. Profiling and hunches are to cops what female intuition is to the ladies. A woman knows when another woman is playing for her man; a cop usually knows when a ne’re do well is up to something sinister. God has put wisdom in our inward parts, the book of Job says (Job 38.36.) Sometimes we don’t fully comprehend why, but we feel the need to profile a thing or person and to follow up on a vague hunch. This is that wisdom at work. When we begin to censure the people we have hired to protect us—when we begin to discourage their use of subtle wisdom arising from these abstruse, occult inward parts, we put both them and us in peril.   

When the cops finally get their backing back from the politicians, provided that better men are voted in, they can get back to profiling and following up on hunches without fear of losing their jobs. As things are now, cops are so afraid of losing their jobs that they might be risking their lives and ours by profiling less and by letting some of their most fruitful hunches fall to the ground without any follow up. When more righteous men get into power, the cops ought to be told, even from the oval office itself, that they can now get back to profiling and following up every hunch. They should be told then, the following: “Cops, get back to what you do best: profile, profile, profile, hunches, hunches, hunches; suspicious Muslim, suspicious Muslim, suspicious Muslim; black thugs, black thugs, black thugs; the hood, the hood, the hood; location, location, location.

This has been a Puritanical opinion on profiling and hunches.

Saturday, September 12, 2015

CRITICAL NOTES ON THE '9/11 TRUTH DOCUMENTARY--GRAVE IMPLICATIONS'

Every September since the infamous date known simply as 9/11, I watch one of the sober, respectful documentaries of that terrorist attack in order to renew my solidarity with those who are against Muslim terrorism and to remind myself of the conflict that we are still in. This year the documentary that I chose to watch is called, ‘102 Minutes that Changed America.’ It is an accurate, decent presentation of this grave subject, notwithstanding some of the exclamations by shocked New Yorkers that are broadcast.   

In September of 2011 a friend of mine forwarded me a link to a documentary called, ‘9/11 Truth Documentary—Grave Implications.’ I watched it, though very uneasily. It is a sensationalistic presentation of 9/11, and it is done in that way in order to forward some farfetched theories. When a documentary of a somber event is done in a tasteless, callous spirit, one should begin to doubt its truth claims because the spirit of a thing usually reveals the nature of its letter.

The insensitive spirit of this documentary is obvious from its beginning. Either my friend was not struck by the insensitivity or he was not bothered by it. That is what I thought at the time. The truth is, he probably was struck by the insensitivity of the presentation and he probably was bothered by it, but was nevertheless drawn in to accept the truth claims therein because the film is seductive in character. I wanted to help my friend figure out how to spot seduction that posed for science in order to spare him from believing lies, not only about 9/11, but about any event that might be cast in a seductive hue in order to deceive. So I watched the whole documentary with my finger ready to hit the pause button and with my pen in hand. When I was done I had a detailed list of the faults that are made in this film. Then I sent my friend the corrective document that I had so assiduously prepared. In the spirit of a ‘9/11 truther,’ he brushed aside my concerns with as much care as a carpenter would brush the dust off his pants. What he did not do is try to refute my concerns about all the faults that I had found.

‘Truthers’ are like charismatic churchgoers (in fact my friend is both.) They have decided, even against much forthcoming evidence, that there are things going on that are as exorbitant as their wildest dreams or more nefarious than their worst nightmares. Cryptic goings on are the meat and drink they must consume in order to fill the spaces in their souls where facts and truth should occupy. You might say that they do not like to learn unless there is some secret code or door to a ‘truth’ that would scandalize even the most sacrilegious persons among us. They follow in the train of the Gnostics who came on the scene to give us their speculations in the place of what Jesus and the apostles had given out as Gospel Truth. These ‘9/11 truthers,’ in my opinion, see the real truth of a matter as too mundane for their exotic minds to absorb. It has become a regular thing for them to refuse the straightforward explanation in favor of the sensationalist speculation. ‘Fun’ is their idol, and they cannot have any fun with facts. Where facts fail to satisfy, fairy tales will have to do. If you probe the lives of such people, you will usually find that they don’t have a lot going on. Because they too rarely admit facts and truth, they are always hungry. Fairy tales are like cotton candy in their mouth, always dissolving and never getting to their belly. They like the taste but the vacuum remains. And so they are ever eating but never being filled.

Not all ‘truthers’ are truthers for life; and there is no good reason for anyone to ever become one. My critique did not suit my friend’s taste. Much of what I say in this critique will apply to other 9/11 documentaries of the conspiratorial variety, as well as conspiracy theories in general. The faults that I found are listed according to the minutes and seconds at which I found them. Allow for these to be off just a bit in case the video post you watch is not exactly in sync with where I watched the video from.     

The critique of ‘9/11 Truth Documentary—Grave Implications’

The command to ‘test all things’ requires us to approach every proposition, not with a neutral spirit, as if we have no lies to expect from the fallen, sinful world, but with a suspicious spirit, for the world is crawling with liars. We are commanded to test all things. To obey this command, we must listen with the possibility of lies in mind. What is that but a suspicious approach? You don’t test just after you’re done listening. No, it is even natural to do it while you listen. To some degree, we all listen critically by nature. The command to test all things is given because we must be especially diligent to do it always and well, and because we will be confronted with philosophies and maneuvers that are engineered to get us listening uncritically. 

This documentary on that horrible event called 9/11 posits that explosives were used to help bring down the World Trade Center towers ten years ago. Its not so indirect accusation is that government officials, including then President Bush, were involved in the supposed conspiracy to do the evil deed.

That is quite a testament to how old Scripture truth applies to this new world we live in: “The Lord knoweth how…to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished: but chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous are they, selfwilled, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities” (2 Peter 2.9, 10.)

The men who cobbled this documentary together are the kind of men spoken of in these two inspired verses. If the government and dignities of Peter’s day are spoken of as being worthy of his honor, then, by application, government and dignities of our day are worthy of our honor. The ministering spirits are our guide: “Whereas angels, which are greater in power and might, bring not railing accusation against them before the Lord” (verse 11.) The angels, greater, mightier, and not to mention, sinless, do not hurl railing accusations at dignitaries, no matter how evil. How much less ought corrupted man to do so? I’m not saying that leaders ought never to be accused, charged, or even deposed. Maybe that could be done when proof is brought to bear. Maybe it could be done with the support of proof, and in a decent, orderly, firm fashion. But what is a railing accusation? It is a scurrilous accusation: an accusation that is coarse, obscene, or vulgar, which is the kind of accusation that you find being leveled in this documentary. Even if proof were brought to bear in favor of the accusations made (which is not the case), the spirit of this documentary would self-condemn it. The men who fashioned this documentary are railing accusers. The first hint that they are is in how this documentary begins.

The makers of ‘Grave Implications’ do walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness. This is clear from the outset. The upbeat music the documentary begins with is not a suitable spirit for documenting the tragedy of 9/11. Thousands of persons were murdered in that terrorist strike. To play upbeat music in concert with dramatic replays of the towers being plowed into and disintegrating is the work of unclean, lust-filled men. They take the images of this tragic event; then they marry these with music, and the result is a party atmosphere. Pity I did not have my popcorn and beer ready for the show! The music that is used tends to produce an urge to tap one’s toes. Is that appropriate? This effect is so insidious that I was toe-tapping without realizing it! Then my conscience woke up and reproved me. Intentional or not, the party spirit that is generated coaxes the viewer to accept what is said through the medium of pleasure, not fact. Regardless, these ‘9/11 truthers’ treat tragedy resulting in mass murder with as much casual disregard as Wimber treats of the sacred trinity. Did I prejudge this documentary? No, I predicted this atmosphere. Conspiracy theorist material is commonly disrespectful of tragic events and the lives most closely affected by tragedy. That is its chief mark. With nothing more to go on than the inappropriate, unseasonable, unwarranted, and therefore indecent, spirit this documentary begins with, should we not be suspicious of the content that will follow? Where disrespect is, might we not expect to find lying and cheating as well? The spirit this documentary starts with is enough, all by itself, to compel me to cast doubt on the whole. It is enough to justify my ignorance of all that follows. But I watched the whole thing in order to test what you’ve come to believe concerning 9/11, and to test my own opinion too. 

The music they continue with is sensationalistic. This draws us into an emotional acceptance of what is said, kind of like what Christian radio does near the end of its broadcast in order to get sinners to accept Christ in spite of him not being properly preached. We are coaxed into an acceptance, not of fact, but of party, and this, through the emotions, not the mind.

Explosions testified to do not mean that detonations have taken place. Flash fires begun by impacting jet fuel will result in all kinds of combustible material exploding. Therefore some will testify to explosions.

At 5.15 m. one man speaks of the building going down, level by level, as if by detonation. But this man who supposedly ‘testifies’ doesn’t even mean that he thought it was by detonation. He’s using a simile. It’s like me saying that this crow that swept passed my head seemed like a pterodactyl as it went by. I don’t mean to convey that it was a pterodactyl any more than this man meant that the implosion was by detonation. This man’s ‘testimony’ is not a testimony at all. The poor soul just described an event by the use of a simile, and some opportunist labeled ‘testimony’ to what he said.

A newsman speculates on whether or not a bomb was used. What does that prove?

At 6.00 m. a fireman says he heard a loud boom. But what he thought caused that boom is never specified. His words, too, are opportunistically used.

At 6.30 m. a fireman says that he wasn’t expecting to see the damage he saw in the lobby, like the bodies, etc. So what? Does this prove he was intimating that demolitions were used? And does this prove that, as a matter of fact, they were used? An airliner full of jet fuel hits a skyscraper, and there’s supposed to be no fallout or damage on the lower levels? What kind of reasoning is this?

At 6.35 m. a fireman says that the lobby was ‘as though a bomb had exploded there.’ Again, a simile used as if it were testimony. He doesn’t mean by this remark that a bomb went off any more than a person means a freight train mowed down his house by the remark that the tornado sounded like one. 

At 6.55 m. a fireman says that he heard a huge explosion. When is not specified. For all we know he means the sound of the plane hitting the tower.

These firemen are being used as testifiers to something they never testified to. They are speaking their hearts out on the awful hell on earth they just went through, and their anguish-filled words are used to convince people of something these firemen never even testified to. My guess is that they would deny assent to the conclusions their words are made to come to in this documentary.

At 7.25 m. some firemen do admit that they think bombs were in the building. Does that make it true?

At 7.50 m. one man says everything was reduced to dust, the desks, etc. So what? What does this prove? This man is not claiming that this means bombs were used. He says nothing about that.

At 8.30 m. a man says a bomb went off a second before the plane hit. When you look at some of the footage of this event, you will notice that the impact and the sound do not agree to the second. That’s not just due to the audio feed. This anomaly is a norm where large noises interact with a cityscape. You can experience this downtown when loud motorcycles go by. Loud noises interact with city acoustics in such a way that hearing does not always coincide in time with what caused the loud noises. What this man says does not surprise me at all. It should be entirely expected once we are familiar with this phenomenon. But this argument of mine may answer only to testimonies that an explosion happened after the plane hit, not before. Okay, but sights, not just sounds, cause us to misinterpret when things happen. When you look at a building from a certain angle, it will appear as though it’s being hit a second sooner or later than when it is actually hit. That’s just the reality of physics. I’m not talking about the speed barrier here; I’m speaking about how our senses are affected by noises and sights in a skyscraper scene. And consider this: we are supposed to believe that the plot to detonate was so perfect that the detonation came to within a second of when the plane hit the building. Given all the variables, like the uncertainty of time involved in the hijackers taking over the plane, the uncertainty of time involved in setting new bearings, the speed and angle of the aircraft coming at the building, then we will agree, will we not, that detonation could not be so accurately preset as to coincide so closely with the time the planes hit? Therefore, someone with a clear sight of the building would have had to be ready to activate the bomb at the point of impact. But even then, given the angle and speed of the approaching aircraft, what are the odds that this man would come to within a second of the hit? The odds are that he would have been late, not early. That is the common mistake that is made when targets have to be led. But back to my main point: it is common to be a second off your estimation of when a noise occurred in the city. This is the answer to what the man says regarding an explosion happening ‘before the plane hit.’ The plane hitting the building was the explosion. Furthermore, supposing that a bomb went off just before the plane hit the building, why didn’t the other bombs go off at that time? you know, all the other bombs that are said to have gone off later as the buildings were coming down? You know that some time passed between the hit (when one alleged bomb is supposed to have gone off) and the implosion (when the other bombs are alleged to have gone off.) You see, these conspiracy theorists are so eager to prove that bombs were used that they grasp after every word that might be used to construe the allegation; but in doing so, they do not even realize that their hasty construing argues against the very thing they wish to prove: that all the bombs were precisely rigged to go off at such a time and in such a way that demolitions experts must have set the whole thing up for disaster. When a building is brought down by experts, however, what do they do, set off one bomb, and then wait for an hour or a half-hour later to set the rest off? No, that’s not how they do it. They set them to go off in very close proximity of time; they all go off within seconds, or even milliseconds of each other.    

This same man testifies that there was a bomb in the basement. He says he heard other bombs go off later. A towering inferno can answer for all of this. There’s nothing remarkable about that. Things blow up without the means of bombs. A simple Molotov cocktail goes off like a bomb. And these buildings contained many more substances to explode by fire than what a Molotov cocktail contains! All you need is gas, fire, soap, and impact to make an explosion. And what if there was a bomb in the basement? Would this mean that government officials were in on it?

At 15 m. the MIT man speaks of reconstruction that should have taken place, like what was done with the remains of TWA 800. Now how would that be done, given the rubble that the buildings were reduced to? Are you going to reconstruct rubble? And never mind rubble, what about dust? Are you going to reconstruct dust? Lots of rubble and dust, you know, when detonations have taken place! TWA 800 was not reduced to dust and rubble. The pictures show that the large pieces of its frame were recovered and pasted back together. That was not possible to do with the towers, as anyone who has seen the horrible spectacle will testify to. And in what direction would this reconstruction go in? Would it be done vertically or horizontally? Where would this be done? How many people would it take? How much time? How much money? How many geniuses? The thing would have been more impossible to do than to reconstruct a mountain of shredded paper. Also, if bombs will reduce buildings to rubble, while fire and compaction alone will not, why did TWA 800 have such large pieces left of it? It was bombed, was it not? Your conspiracy theorists certainly think so! And there were both fire and compaction to assist in that tragedy, n’est-ce pas? Why such large pieces left, then?  

At 16.11 the following words come on the screen: ‘Evidence Had to be Retreived.’ That’s not my spelling error, but theirs. I won’t make much of this, but errors in spelling simple words, especially when these words make up one of the main parts of a power point presentation, should be viewed, if not as a red flag, then at least as a warning light. It speaks of carelessness, or of work produced by unschooled people, be they schooled at MIT or elsewhere. 

At 22.19 m. the same MIT man speaks of ‘Pyroclastic Flow.’ Then the words come on the screen, as if anyone knows what Pyroclastic Flow means. The words are presented like this to make the MIT man appear scholarly. And he needs it after that reconstruction gaffe! Anyway, the smoke, dust, and debris that flowed horizontally may be explained, at least in part, and maybe fully, by the streets between tall buildings acting as a funnel. He intimates that heat would be necessary to reduce contents in the building to powder (I think he must mean the contents pertaining to lower floors where no principal inferno was.) But could objects and effects not be reduced to powder by crushing pressure alone? You can reduce a cinder block to dust by a few blows with a hammer, you know. What do you think the weight of these searing buildings could do, even to desks and filing cabinets? They don’t make desks and filing cabinets like they used to, you know. Tap a few of these on the side the next time you’re in a store. And this searing heat descended as the building came down, which answers for heat existing at lower levels. Also, what he fails to mention is that when the jet fuel exploded on impact, fireballs were plunged down elevator shafts. Lots of heat to lower levels from that! Lots of heat to cause structural damage then! No need of bombs to bring buildings down when a fact like that be considered! He says that evacuation drills happened just prior to 9/11. What would this go to prove? This is precisely what you would not expect if a conspiracy to explode the buildings were in order!

At 28 m. we are shown that blasts seem to be shooting out the sides of one of the buildings on its way down. These blast-like shots occur just below the oncoming crush, floor by floor. Could these blasts be happening, not because of explosives, but on account of mere pressure from above? This is logical; it is just another phenomenon of physics. You do not need detonation for debris to be blown out the sides of a building as it comes down. Weight, speed, air, and gravity will take care of that. This physics lesson could be shown by a simple child’s experiment at home.

At 33.41 m. it is said that someone was told that one of the towers was going to collapse just before it did collapse. The person who stated as much would be one of your conspirators, then. Why not arrest him? Then this whole plot would be uncovered and solved. Truly, it would not be a remarkable thing if someone said the building was going to fall just before it did fall. The sights and the sounds at ground zero would compel exactly that sort of prophecy from someone or other. Probably many people were speculating and fearing that this would occur. That someone said it would happen just before it did happen proves nothing at all. It’s quite predictable that such a thing would have been said at that time.

Threats were made against the towers before the towers were attacked. Does this prove, that because some officials were aware of this, that therefore officials were in on the attack? If someone threatened to break your window, does this mean that everyone who heard the rumor was in on the window getting broken?

At 40.25 US intelligence is reported as speaking of ‘something out there’ before 9/11 happened. So what? Should the powers-that-be cry wolf every time a threat like ‘something out there’ has come in to headquarters? Mayor Willie Brown received news advising him to be cautious of air travel; but the call ‘didn’t come in an alarming fashion.’ That’s all the warning that is warranted when ‘something may be out there’ Oh, but some officials changed their flight plans just when ‘something out there’ was looming. Is there any connexion here? Threats are directed to the USA regularly. Officials cancel flights regularly. If every threat were reported to the public, first there would be panic, then anger, and then indifference. This is why threats of uncertain origin and destination are not generally made known, not because the government wants its citizens to die in burning towers. At 39.04 m. an article by CBS news comes up regarding Ashcroft flying by leased jet instead of by commercial airline. No data is provided here concerning why or when this occurred, only speculation and insinuation.

At 39.14 m. it is said that on September 10th some top Pentagon officials cancelled travel plans for next morning, ‘apparently’ because of security concerns. That word ‘apparently’ worries me. It speaks of someone’s conjecture, nothing more. And again, officials cancel flight plans regularly, even daily. Just because some of them did this on the 10th means nothing. How many officials cancelled flight plans on the 2nd, on the 3rd, or on December 25th, for that matter? Probably the numbers are similar to cancellations on September 10th, because officials do this sort of thing every day.

At 47.12, then President Bush is quoted as saying, “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful; so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people; and neither do we.” Supposing that this audio is not altered, it is clear from the gist of sentence one that his meaning in sentence two is of similar intention. He does not mean in sentence two that he and his government never stop thinking of ways of harming their own people; he means that the USA is up to the task of meeting every contrivance and assault. Pouncing on an official’s misspoken words to prove an evil allegation is precisely the sin of speaking evil of dignities. 

In this documentary bits of truth are made to kiss carefully selected bits of error in order to convince us that government officials are guilty of mass murdering their citizens.

Let’s turn now to Adam Clarke’s commentary on 2 Peter 2.11: “Verse 11. Whereas angels, &c. This is a difficult verse, but the meaning seems to be this: The holy angels, who are represented as bringing an account of the actions of the fallen angels before the Lord in judgment, simply state the facts without exaggeration, and without permitting any thing of a bitter, reviling, or railing spirit, to enter into their accusations. See Zecariah 3:1, and Jude 1:9; to the former of which St. Peter evidently alludes. But these persons, not only speak of the actions of men which they conceive to be wrong, but do it with untrue colourings, and the greatest malevolence. Michael, the archangel, treated a damned spirit with courtesy; he only said, The Lord rebuke thee, Satan! but these treat the rulers of God’s appointment with disrespect and calumny.”

I believe that the holy angels may be reporting on men here, not their fallen counterparts. But the drift, in Pierrardian terminology, is apropos. Railing, reviling, exaggeration, false colorings—these are the sins that unite certain men of the 21st century with the ones that are spoken of by Peter from the 1st. The guilty parties referred to by Peter have for their modern equals the makers of ‘Grave Implications.’ They are fellows of a single feather, weaves of the same cloth, and unless these latter fellows repent, refuse for the same Gehenna. The grave implication of being guilty of a reviling accusation may be a sorry end.      

M. H. G. 

Friday, September 11, 2015

WARS AND MONEY IN TODAY'S AMERICA

There are many unconventional, domestic wars going on in America: the war on justice and the border in order to get greater numbers of visible minorities into position who will vote for the Left; the war on students by professors who sift their courses through the divisive subjects of racism and feminism in order to further a socialist agenda; the war on women by entertainment programs to convince that naïve sex to sleep around, which serves to subject women to men who use females for casual, irresponsible pleasure; the war on babies by agencies and clinics that benefit from the sale of baby body parts; the war on men by judges who award feminists with their ex-husbands’ hard-earned money; the war on industry through over-regulation and arbitrary carbon limits, which is a ruse to confiscate more money through higher taxes; and the war on cops that has been generated by President Obama and his racist ideologues to incite violence between races, which is done to keep blacks in a state of discontent and agitation in order to benefit the political party that hands out the most freebies to those who repine and wallow in unjustified self-pity.  

All unjust wars, conventional or otherwise, come from the same place. They come from a place of lust, which the apostle Peter alludes to in his first epistle (2.11) and which James hints at in his epistle (4.1.) Peter’s comment addresses the fact that wars are directed against the soul, while James’ comment addresses the more serious fact that they are aimed at God. The way to get at the things that fulfill our lusts includes, most notably, money. That is why the Bible states that “the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6.10.)

All of these wars are rooted in the love of money, and money is the means to every kind of lust. Money is the root of why politicians want to increase the illegal immigrant population. Increasing the number of illegals and giving them amnesty increases the votes of those who let them in and give them that amnesty, and the votes result in political tenure, which is the means to easy money and easy access to those who have it. Money is the root of the socialist agenda in our universities, for it is socialism that demands more and more money from the government through taxpayers to make professors rich while they brainwash our youth. Money is the root of making girls and women into wanton tramps, for then the men can use women without marrying them or supporting them or their offspring. Moreover, consider how much money is made in the entertainment sector just by getting women to pose or act lewdly. Money is the root of abortion, as the sting videos abundantly show. Moreover, it is cheaper to kill a baby than to raise it, which takes decades of labor and sacrifice to make enough money to do. Money is the root of awarding women alimony payments they don’t deserve, for showing a bias in favor of special interest groups is a shortcut to being promoted by crooked politicians. Money is the root of the global warming fantasy, for the cure for that, they say, is to tax the industries that extract resources from nature and convert the same into energy. And money is at the root of the race war that our fake civil rights warriors are whipping up, for the politicians who foment racist tensions do so to stay in power, which translates into money, while the racist media activists and the racist talk show hosts play on those tensions to keep their ratings up and their speeches lucrative. Racial tensions and a black versus white narrative make popular topics from which to hold a fan base and to make money from it.

People love money because money is the way to fulfill their lusts. The surest way to remedy this evil is not to ban money, redistribute money, or make more money. The surest way to a remedy is to wound the root of the root of all evil, which is the root of the love of money, which is lust. And this is done one person at a time through the preaching of the gospel, which informs the sinner that these wars that are waged in the pursuit of money are directed mainly at an offended God. Once the offence against God is acknowledged, and the forgiveness for the offence received through faith in the One who bore the punishment for the offence, the lusty impulses, through the influence of the Holy Ghost, are overruled to a degree that makes way for peace instead of war. When lusts are smothered into submission, the love of money is severely wounded and is no longer a reigning evil; it can, then, rear its head only intermittently. War is the fire; money is the chaff; the love of money is the fuel; and lust is the ever-active fuse. That is how it works. The fire of war burns, to some extent, within us throughout life. Reduce the fuel, or love of money, and you diminish the fire; war, then, is for the most part reserved for just causes; and money is mainly used to benefit society rather than satiate lusts.  

Lust is more than just the sexual kind, and it excites people to acquire money for a variety of reasons to dissimilar degrees. To use another analogy, circumstances like diseases, conveniences, and sudden fortunes can help drive the mercury of lust up or down, to the surprise or shock of onlookers and loved ones. Only the grace of God applied can bring that mercury to an all-time low; and only the means of grace employed can keep it from rising up to cause the soul to overheat with desires that are idolized to the point of making war.       


This has been a Puritanical opinion on wars and money in today’s America. 

Thursday, September 10, 2015

HARPER COLLINS PUBLISHES SMUT

Here is the issue, which I learned about on June 12th, 2015, on CBC’s radio program called Q, which was being hosted on that day by Piya Chattopadhyay. 

Canada’s Harper Collins published a book that was rejected by 41 US publishers because of its content. This is the kind of content that it was rejected for containing: among other indecently provocative themes: sexual assault and faux incest. By faux incest is meant, not actual incest, but some kind of ‘flirtation’ with the notion, according to the author of the book, John Colapinto. This author has written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone magazine. And so it is unlikely that the 41 US publishing houses rejected him because they thought he was just another wannabe writer submitting another amateur manuscript. Can you imagine how polluted a book has to be in order for it to be rejected by publishing houses in the USA? Canada will publish it, though, because we are on the cutting edge of smut up here, I guess.

Not surprisingly, Colapinto likes to read books by Philip Roth and John Updike. He claims to be in the path of Nobokov when that author wrote ‘Lolita’—another thing that he should be too ashamed to admit. He says that he is “pushing the boundaries with elegance and skill.” Probably his skills are very limited. And you know exactly what I mean if you’ve read some of the stories that The New Yorker publishes. You don’t have to be a very capable writer to be published in Canada. You just have to edit and revise a few dozen times, obey the editor, and write stuff that is feminist friendly, pro-gay, politically correct, or obscene.

Colapinto’s book is obscene. You can tell just by listening to the author talk about it. And Piya Chattopadhyay couldn’t put it down, she admits. Piya likes to read obscene material, and, unfortunately, there are many Piyas out there. So stuff like this sells.

But it is better to quench attractions to obscenity, and to read decent literature instead. Colapinto’s latest book is ‘darn good,’ he says, and he is really excited about his next novel, which will be even ‘more provocative.’ He should take the advice of a character in a story of R. L. Stevenson’s that I read the other day. “I should be too afraid to chronicle the language employed by this young man to the Doctor, to the murdered man, to Madame Zepherine, to the boots at the hotel, to the Prince’s servants, and, in a word, to all who had been ever so remotely connected with his horrible misfortune” (The Complete Short Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson, pp. 82, 83.) It is apropos that Colapinto’s unclean book is titled Undone since becoming undone is what happened to the prophet Isaiah (see Isaiah 6) when he found himself, with unclean lips, before the holy throne of God. If a saint like Isaiah comes undone before God because of his unclean lips, how undone will a secular author be on Judgment Day who writes unclean stories for the public to consume? 

Yes, we should all be afraid to chronicle obscene themes in foul language and without an upright moral context, for God will bring every word into judgment. “Young writers should rebel from their literary fathers,” Colapinto says. No, young writers should imitate those literary fathers who, like R. L. Stevenson, shrunk from writing indecent material. “Good old Canada, I love you,” says Colapinto, for publishing his trashy book. The publication of trash is not something that Canada should be known for and it should not be celebrated. We should accept the testimony of another character in that story of R. L. Stevenson’s that I recently read, for it might dissuade us from slipping into what the Bible calls licentious behavior. Resisting licentiousness would save us from a lot of judgment in the end. About forms of debauchery, the character says, “I have tried them all, sir…all without exception, and I declare to you, upon my honour, there is not one of them that has not been grossly and untruthfully overrated” (Ibid, p. 46.) Solomon makes a similar statement in his autobiography called Ecclesiastes. If you will not believe a character in a fictional story, at least believe in a saint that God himself declares to have been the wisest man in the world in his day! “And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them…and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2.10, 11.) Many modern playboys and sports icons have confessed the same in our day.

“Of making many books there is no end,” complains Solomon wearily (Ecclesiastes 12.12.) If a wise man was this weary of books in general and his own books in particular way back then, what would he say about the dirty trash that is being written today? Dissipation is not literature. It’s just bawdy imagination put to paper, created for those who haven’t enough self-respect and ambition to lift their minds above the level of a gutter. What deserves to be called literature never descends to the level of dissipation, which novels are so full of these days. And dissipation in books appears in more forms than ever before at this time.  

All forms of dissipation are overrated. Today’s novels are overrated. Canadian literature is overrated. The obscene material that Harper Collins publishes is overrated. And Harper Collins itself is overrated. 

This has been a Puritanical opinion on the moral state of Harper Collins in Canada.