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Sunday, January 7. 2018Is antipathy towards Christianity all about sex?From THE ZEALOUS FAITH OF SECULARISM - HOW THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION BECAME A DOGMA:
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Matthew 26:41 Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
always scripture, never your own understanding I wonder if it would be fair to quibble with use of the term "re-paganization"? After all Pagans had their Gods; and there is, after all, a term that applies to those who recognize no God; which I believe is the what the article describes.
I also wonder if Atheism is not a fairly modern concept; one that developed as humans became more sophisticated, or perhaps more arrogant, than their forebearers derived from the Ancient Greek ἄθεος atheos meaning "without gods; godless; secular; denying or disdaining the gods, especially officially sanctioned gods"[1]) is the absence or rejection of the belief that deities exist. The English term was used at least as early as the sixteenth century and atheistic ideas and their influence have a longer history. Over the centuries, atheists have supported their lack of belief in gods through a variety of avenues, including scientific, philosophical, and ideological notions.
In the East, a contemplative life not centered on the idea of deities began in the sixth century BCE with the rise of Jainism, Buddhism, and certain sects of Hinduism in India, and of Taoism in China. Within the astika ("orthodox") schools of Hindu philosophy, the Samkhya and the early Mimamsa school did not accept a creator-deity in their respective systems. Philosophical atheist thought began to appear in Europe and Asia in the sixth or fifth century BCE. Will Durant, in his The Story of Civilization, explained that certain pygmy tribes found in Africa were observed to have no identifiable cults or rites. There were no totems, no deities, and no spirits. Their dead were buried without special ceremonies or accompanying items and received no further attention. They even appeared to lack simple superstitions, according to travelers' reports. The Vedas of Ceylon admitted only the possibility that deities might exist but went no further. Neither prayers nor sacrifices were suggested in any way by the tribes Your comment in regards to the pre-Christianized pagans reminds me of a passage I read 8 or so years ago in the book "The Heart of Newman" - a collections of lectures, sermons and other works of Blessed Henry Newman. It is too long to quote in full here, but the gist is that everything before Him was prep work for the human to be able to accept revelation of God and only the Jews were given a "directly divine dispensation" but there had been "in some sense a dispensation carried on in favor of the Gentiles." (Including greeks, romans, pagans, poets and sages). "...the process had been slow; ... by rule and measure ... first one disclosure and then another, till the whole evangelical doctrine was brought into full manifestation. ...and thus room was made...for deeper disclosures of truth, still under the veil ...and in their season to be to be revealed." (This was Newman referring to his reading of Clement of Alexandria and Origen)
And this slow process of revelation is wonderfully framed by Romano Guardini in his book "The Virtues That Lead You to God" - highly highly highly recommended - in the chapter on the virtue of "gentleness" (i know, i hadnt considered the depth of it until i read those amazing 7 pages either!) In which Guardini speaks of God as the "consummate gentleman", which this reader could not disagree with. Happy Epiphany Colossians 2:8Authorized (King James) Version (AKJV)
8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. 1 Timothy 6:20 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations 2 Timothy 2:16 But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness. In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations I think it all misses the point. If you are a Christian one can only assume you are happy with it then why would you care what someone else thinks? BUT it is exactly this meddling in what someone else thinks that gets the Christian in trouble. I don't care if you are pagan, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or whatever. Why would anyone else care???
Leviticus 19:17
Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him love thy neighbour @OneGuy - I confess that I doubt you really want an answer to that question, but are couching an insult in terms of an asked question. There are a few answers, all of them quite easy to imagine. Or, if you lack that imagination, you could look up what millions of people actually say.
For openers, you clearly care what other people think, or you would not be commenting. That contradiction is not small. I think learning to understand that in yourself is the beginning. I don't know whether you will tend to reject my remarks because you think them opaque, think them infuriating, or something else. But that will be your second clue. Opaque. I don't understand your comment except that you are clearly couching an insult in terms of a comment.
I was not trying to insult. The article seemed one sided and begged balance. It is like someone who loves artichokes and cannot abide that everyone doesn't like artichokes and thinks laws, or something, should be passed to make everyone like artichokes. I'm just saying, enjoy your artichokes and others will enjoy their asparagus. It's ok, really, it's OK. Marxists really, really, really care...nothing before the state.
Good article, but... I think calling what is going on today “re-paganization” misses the point. What is going on is worse. Pagans had culture, morals, and codes of allowable public behavior including sex. Once you kill a culture, you don’t revert to an older culture, you revert to emptiness and darkness. We are being unfair to pagan culture. I think most Christians, including me, would rather live in classical pagan culture over where we are headed.
What is going on is the recommendation of Antonio Gramsci. He wrote:
Orthodox Marxism had predicted that socialist revolution was inevitable in capitalist societies. By the early 20th century, no such revolution had occurred in the most advanced nations. Capitalism, it seemed, was more entrenched than ever. Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political and economic coercion, but also through ideology. The bourgeoisie developed a hegemonic culture, which propagated its own values and norms so that they became the "common sense" values of all. People in the working-class (and other classes) identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie, and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting. It was necessary for the Bourgeois values, including religion, to be destroyed so that Marxism could win. Gramsci stated that bourgeois cultural values were tied to folklore, popular culture and religion, and therefore much of his analysis of hegemonic culture is aimed at these. He was also impressed by the influence Roman Catholicism had and the care the Church had taken to prevent an excessive gap developing between the religion of the learned and that of the less educated. Gramsci saw Marxism as a marriage of the purely intellectual critique of religion found in Renaissance humanism and the elements of the Reformation that had appealed to the masses. For Gramsci, Marxism could supersede religion only if it met people's spiritual needs, and to do so people would have to think of it as an expression of their own experience. The Marxists are behind much of the atheism we see. The expectations of Christianity is that you arrive at it by free will. The expectations of Marxism is that you arrive at it by mandate. In the west Marxism has had to rely on race and gender battles because class battles didn't work well against Capitalism. The answer for Marxists was to infiltrate all the institutions to have them fighting over race and gender issues. Do you think it is working? It isn't even that hard to find the Marxists in all the American education and religious institutions. Look at the gender battles even in the military.
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