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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...

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. 

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