It's like we have to try everything else first
Dar observes, "It *feels* like things are getting crazier because we're close to a tipping point where the Leftist propaganda gets widely rejected. It's like we have to try everything else first."
I find this very likely—and satisfying—from a theological perspective. Note, when I apply religious ideas to politics, it is only because I see God as the Master of everything.
I know what I am about to say isn't exactly mainstream eschatology; I've been chastened by more than on M.Div. for suggesting it, but I think (a) it makes sense and (b) I'm probably just not explaining it in terms an M.Div. would go for.
I'm going to assume it is uncontroversial that in the end, God will render a perfect Judgement and restore perfect Justice. But what does this mean? I think the answer has great implications for the so-called Problem of Suffering and the Problem of Free Will.
Justice is as much an affair of the heart as of the mind. Perfect justice must needs satisfy both. When God reigns, we will both KNOW justice and FEEL justice. This implication is weaker for the believer, because the believer skips a lot of trial-and-error via faith.
"Wait! Trial-and-error? Justice isn't a guessing game!"
Except for us humans, it is.
"But God brings justice, not humans!"
I never said He didn't. That doesn't change the fact that perfect justice needs to be known and felt. BY EVERYONE.
That is to say, perfect justice is UNDENIABLE. "Every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess." If there remains one soul who does not know or feel God's justice, then the seed of rebellion lives on in that soul and God's victory is incomplete.
Rebellion against God is denial of His sufficiency for all things, including justice. It is the continual insistence, even from the pit of failure, that "š¯‘¹š¯’†š¯’‚š¯’¨ X has never been tried!"
Thus, in order for His perfect justice to be revealed, God allows people to try EVERYTHING.
In the Book of Matthew, Christ describes the Day of Judgement as a day of Revelation: “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’”
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’”
The King does not simply condemn those on his left, but shows to them how they cursed themselves.
Then the parable concludes...
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
And what is missing? The unrighteous no longer protest. They do not insist that the Lord played an unfair trick. In their silence, they affirm the judgement. They have nothing more to say.
And so it is even in our present time. Those who ardently believe in man's justice, and nothing higher, stumble and fumble, trying every wrong combination until only the right one remains. And even then, they think they have discovered something on their own.
Gladly, their stumbling has an end, and in time it will be shown that what is right was always right, and the dissenters will be silenced. Until then, "...we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose."
You don't shy away from tricky subjects, do you? This is an especially tough one for me due to my own background, though you may have picked up on that if you caught the replies to the hypothetical May tweets touching on the subject. Buckle up, it's get things out of my head to a wiser audience than me time again. Southern church culture is no place for a weird kid, though I can't imagine the Midwestern version, or whichever one you might have grown up in, is much better.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the position I find myself in is, for lack of a better way of putting it, "feeling" that connection to Christ just enough to keep myself from throwing my hands up at all the ridiculous churchiness and lack of intellectual heft in said culture, declaring myself an agnostic, and just being done with it all. Still, that all emotional fluff/woo-woo part isn't good for someone who processes things from the mind first (frequent rounds of depression and anxiety notwithstanding), and a lot of the time I find myself feeling like a fool for even having that much faith. Guys like Dawkins, Harris, and deGrasse Tyson might be smug little sphincters about it all, but at least my brain can get what they're saying and the various churches don't really have anyone capable of putting things in terms it can get. Which may very well be the whole point of faith, I suppose, but it makes it extremely difficult to live out. This is especially true for things like sitting through sermons, Bible studies, and such, and prayer is perhaps the worst of them all in that regard.
Which brings me to the other scandal, in the classic Biblical sense, the feeling that if there's a higher power in my life it's actually Loki. Or maybe Tzeentch. Or Nyarlathotep even. This isn't a secure communication channel so I won't get into my own run of the mill sob story here - I don't mind if Andrew shares what I told him with you, though, and you can direct him to this comment as proof of permission - but some of the things that have hit me in life almost feel surreal, and it frequently seems like not only do I fail, but things pile up on top of that to the point where I feel like something out there is punishing me for daring to try bettering my life. Needless to say, this gives prayer - a concept I'm already dubious about because of the intellectual part - a feeling of getting pissed on by some random schmuck and then having to thank Mr. Schmuck for giving me a towel to wipe his piss off with. It's just so frustrating, and not having, well...anyone who gets this sort of perspective to talk things out with and work through these issues is exhausting, especially on top of everything else going on.
So, on to the main subject... I ran across this article in a post of Sarah Hoyt's a few days ago, or rather a repost meant to act as encouragement through hard times and it was interesting to read. The article in the link is a couple of years old but it was enough to even make me wonder. I hope this Dar's observation is right and that the Left's gaslighting and propaganda is just about played out. You and Mrs. Hoyt have both observed that their actions reek of desperation rather than confidence in victory. Still, like we discussed elsewhere, that institutional power worries me, as well as just where the public is in all of this. I don't suspect it's anywhere good. As for where the Almighty is in all this, and what his ultimate game is in all of this, I couldn't even hazard a guess, and nor am I completely certain that I still won't end up on the wrong side of the Final Judgment. I guess we'll see when we get there.
And slightly off-topic but the For(nicate) the People Act couldn't rise to the occasion against the filibuster and died in the Senate. Even our Governor in Exile, Stacey Abrams, is backing away from it now and saying she was always for voter ID. Lying, bloated clown. Still feeling depressed and pessimistic as the Hell I'm surely going to but any victory we can get, right?
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