Take Up the Cross and Follow Him

Matthew 16:24-25 New King James Version (NKJV)

24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.



Monday, December 23, 2013

The Fight For Hearts And Minds

By Jeffrey T. Brown


The dark influence of progressivism grows day by day, as those on the left fully realize the extent to which they have been given license to force their worldview on the rest of us. In the name of "equality," "fairness," or "rights," the left's euphemisms for social deconstruction, they act in ways consciously designed to weaken or destroy moral order. Racially-motivated crime spirals upward, enabled by officials who have expressly refused to hold blacks to account for criminal wrongdoing motivated by race. Illegal immigrants are considered virtuous and deserving of entitlements and rights that even native-born Americans do not possess Thw sexual preferences of a minuscule minority of the country have become so awe-inspiring to the left that the act of gay persons choosing with whom to have sex has elevated them to heroic status, while making anything other than a ringing endorsement of their choices punishable by censorship and bans. Opinions are permitted as long as they promote the beliefs of the enforcers.
What each of these groups has in common is their aggressiveness in breaking down social order. They do not seek to live as equals in society, but to demand rewards from society for their actions, and to punish those who object or resist. The historic immorality of their choices only makes them more favored members of the Democratic Party's protected classes, perhaps because they are at the forefront of the left's ongoing crusade to abolish morality and replace it with a system based on promoting and rewarding lawlessness, deception, and fraud. It's not that the left cares so much for their interests as it values their utility. If they did not advance the domestic agenda, the usefulness of gays, and their new favored status, would evaporate.
The left's malice is being increasingly directed against anything and everything religious. Faithful Christians and Jews, as believers in historical morality, are singled out for ridicule and derision, since their faiths are contrary to the secular religion of progressivism. Christians are largely demonized as bigoted, repressed holdouts, while Jews are demonized because it's comfortable for the left to historically blame them for anything not easily blamed on someone or something else. Christ said we would always have the poor among us, but he could just as easily have said that about anti-Semites.
Progressivism encourages the growing anti-Enlightenment that has fully reshaped the Democratic party. One's belief in the sanctity of the human being, his divine origins, and the protection of unalienable rights with which he was born, which guided the Founders, is portrayed as the height of ignorance and intolerance by progressives. For the leftist, you see, rights and human dignity are gifted by those in power, not by God. They have purposefully removed God from the equation. The most fundamental right of all, that of obeying one's own conscience, means nothing to the left unless the conscience at issue agrees with them. If a Christian's conscience is the quiet voice of God, as some who listen to it still believe, it is understandable why it is so objectionable to those it does not applaud. The left has deemed such consciences defective, deserving of scorn, and has targeted them for change. Daily exposure to progressive "culture" has become our re-education camp.
Increasingly, the left's war on moral order involves isolating the traditionally faithful. Whom individuals worshipped in their hearts used to be both personal and beyond the bounds of decent critique by others. Now the left has declared what form of worship will be considered acceptable, and what form will garner public vilification. To refuse to worship the myriad false gods erected by the left is becoming illegal. Even more strangely, to refuse to abandon God and instead embrace the left's zealous faith in abortion, lawlessness, public fraud, public theft, homosexual marriage, secularism, self-gratification, the ruthless demonization of decent people, and American self-hatred, is said to be forcing Christianity on others against their will. In other words, the act of Christians defending themselves against assault is falsely presented as a form of willful attack, making progressives the victims!
In the form of our elected leadership, the rejection of traditional morality has devolved from being the disreputable behavior of individuals to becoming the basis of the domestic policy of the United States government. If you doubt this, look at how our leaders conduct themselves, and ask yourself whether their words and deeds are moral, or advance moral principles or objectives. Ask yourself when you last heard an elected politician of either party speak of Christianity or its principles as worthy of praise or protection, and conduct themselves accordingly, rather than to merely be trolling for money or votes. Compare that to the last time you heard politicians speak glowingly, or evasively, of all things antithetical to the morality embodied in Christianity.
Progressivism is not only the guiding political philosophy of the left, but is becoming our new, national religion. It is being adopted and imposed by people far more malignant than any smeared Christian could be. It gives believers the structure and comfort of religion, without the guilt of complete surrender to immorality. As we have seen with Islam, the merger of politics and religion is total, reordering the beliefs and practices of a government and a people shaped by its tenets. Progressivism brooks no competition. You are either a believer, or you are an enemy of the faith. And as with Islam, to be an enemy of the faith makes one an enemy of the state. As such, Christians are particularly reviled for their refusal to abandon fundamental morality. They are an inconvenient reminder of the fallacy and idiocy of human gods.
In bygone days, there were still more people of true faith than there were progressive zealots. Even those who were not actively practicing a religion of their youth or heritage did not begrudge those who did. Now, however, policy is shaped by a president and those who believe in him, and they have revealed their frank loathing for those who cling to Bibles, with love rather than bitterness, instead of Rules for Radicals. A discernable shift is occurring, and it does not bode well for the future of the faith upon which our nation was founded and prospered, or the coequal freedoms enshrined in our Constitution. The progressive version of "hope" is not in God and the dignity with which he endowed each of us, but in the designs of greedy and angry men and women, to whom our dignity is irrelevant.
It is time to choose to Whom we owe faith and gratitude for the miracle of our existence, and the beauty in our lives. Let us resist to the end the demand that we pledge our souls to men.

No comments:

Post a Comment