The Importance Of Baptism

 If you are a GenXer like me, you probably remember how big horror genre was in the 1980s. Omen and that sort of thing. I recall a movie I watched once about some man who wanted to rule the world and used black magic for this. He need a human sacrifice for his incantation to work (yes, he was that evil). It had to be an unbaptised child and in the end, he found a boy from an unbelieving family. It produced so much impression on me that I still remember this detail, many years later...

While I don't wish to start a discussion about paedo vs credo baptism, I'd like to point out that the Scriptures say that the children of believers are holy, which literally means "set apart." That's exactly what the child baptism does, imo. On the other hand, many Evangelical churches still allow rather young children to be baptised, since they believe that even a child of 4-5 years old can be a professing Christian, so it's not a real problem. 

The real problem is the fact that many people who were baptised by their parents turned out unbelievers or are, at the very least, indifferent to the matters of faith. They aren't going to baptise their children or to bring them to church or to pray over them or any of these things. And I do believe that it means trouble in the future. 

There is this famous Bible verse (Matthew 5:13):

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? 

Believers have a preserving influence on the society, as the West becomes less Christian we see the very fabric of it being torn apart. And while being baptised won't bring you to Heaven if you don't have a saving faith, since it's a sacrament it still has a protective effect, imo; and not only on the person himself/herself, but on the society as a whole. 

You ain't seen nothing yet. Personally I expect things to get a whole lot worse...

A Cat Would Be A Better Mother

 

 

 This is a daycare worker, btw.

Shocking

 but not really surprising:

People talk about the competency crisis but you simply have no clue what's coming

Trump And Abortion

 Interesting:

In the first of five newly scheduled visits to the Hawkeye State, Donald Trump arrived in northeast Iowa with a warning.

“In order to win in 2024, Republicans must learn how to properly talk about abortion,” he told an audience of some 2,000 potential voters, packed into a ballroom here.

"This issue cost us unnecessarily but dearly in the midterms. It cost us dearly, really, and unnecessarily."

Witch Hunt Against Russel Brand Gathers Steam

 I don't know if he is guilty, but twenty years ago...Come on! 

Despite him not having even been accused of streaming anything objectionable on YouTube, the social media giant has demonetized Russell Brand.

Well, what do you think? 

Boy Told To Wear A Skirt

A 12-year-old lad was placed in isolation for wearing shorts to school during the sweltering heatwave.

Archie Thompson was told by staff at Fullhurst Community College, in Braunstone, Leicester, he could don a skirt instead.

 I can understand his mother's indignation:

"I was outraged at that comment to be honest," she admitted. "He can wear a skirt but he's not allowed to wear shorts.

 Yet isn't there a whiff of hypocrisy:

"He's a boy, he doesn't want to wear a skirt...He identifies as a male..."

If skirts/dresses are distinctly female clothes which aren't suitable for boys/males to wear, while pants and shorts are for men, then why most Western women wear them and not dresses? 

⁵ The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.

This cross-dressing didn't start in the current year, if you know what I mean. We just decided one day that the rules didn't apply to women the same way they applied to men. Present day progressives just take the equality idea to its logical end...

Someone Tells It Like It Is

Agree fully:)

No More Mister Nice Guy

 Here is actually a kinda interesting post from VD:

 As Sun Tzu says, to win, one must know the enemy as well as knowing oneself. This is why Deltas so often lose in situations they could easily win, as they make no effort to understand or anticipate their opposition, but are more concerned about being seen to be doing the right thing. Howeve, the last thing a woman who is ending her marriage in search of fun and freedom wants is to be tied down full-time by her children, with even less time for fun and games than she had when she was married.

I should add that men have a natural advantage over women, even in our feminised and increasingly misandric society. However, they are constantly shamed by basically everyone around them into not using it. It worked with Baby Boomers and is one of the reasons the 1960s feminists were so successful: because of the rather misplaced chivalry of the men of that generation.

However, there is literally zero reason to be chivalrous in a situation which the linked blog post describes. Sometimes you need to go for the jugular...

How To Get Men Into Church

 Stop treating them with contempt: 

 Even when one can’t help being around contemptuous people, one creates different kinds of distance. The henpecked husband, for example, increasingly retreats into work and hobbies to minimize dealings with his wife. It would be silly to think the same kind of dynamic wouldn’t happen in our congregations...

The first step is to recognize and repent of our fear. Like most Americans, American Christians are absolutely terrified of being labeled misogynist...

Alas for them: popular culture judges anything contrary to feminism as misogynistic, and the Bible is by no means a feminist book.

So Christians “defend” the Bible by placarding a few passages that sound maybe-sort-of feminist (e.g. “Deborah!” “In Christ there is no male and female!”), while ignoring and even obfuscating all the passages that cannot possibly be reconciled with feminist philosophy (“Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord.” “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man”).

If we try to overcompensate in this fashion even on Scripture, how much more do we do so regarding the men in our midst?

The Law On Single Moms

 Modern churches shame Christian men for not wishing to marry single moms:

So without further ado, here are the theological errors in his three reasons he thinks “Christian men should pursue Christian single moms for marriage.”

“1. Single Christian moms are as pure as the sinless Son of God, which is more than you deserve in a wife.”

Here, Parkison confuses righteousness coram deo (before God) with righteousness coram mundo (before the world.)  Before God, single Christian moms are indeed pure due to the imputed righteousness of Christ, which he mentions several times in the piece. But in this very same sentence, he judges Christian men coram mundo when he indicates that they don’t deserve such a wife.  After all, coram deo, Christian men are likewise pure & perfect. Accordingly, they truly deserve a spotless bride just as much as Jesus Christ does. In other words, Parkison is making an apples-to-oranges comparison here.

Such attitude to single moms being perfection itself is rather new. I'd like to give you an example of how the law and custom used to treat single moms somewhere about 100 years ago in my country. 

First, there were no "single moms". You had widows, which were respected, divorced women and unwed mothers of bastards illegitimate kids. Those groups were all treated differently. I'm not sure how the law treated the rights of a divorced mother before WWII. After the war, they usually got the custody but the divorce itself was considered something extremely shameful and their choice of prospective marriage partners was rather slim.

Poor widows were to be provided for by their male relatives, usually brothers. Since a woman was not considered responsible enough to raise a child on her own, the law made her brother the guardian of the child and any decision, such as education had to be approved by him. As you can understand, many men were very resentful at the idea of having to support both his own family and that of his sister. I heard stories about some relatives where the lady was left a widow with 6 or 7 children and her brother made such a deal out of it that she swore to marry the 1st man who would take her. She then married a widower with 6 kids of his own (all boys while hers were all girls).

Even though he had married her so that she could take care of his kids, he again resented very much the necessity of providing for the kids of another man and promptly kicked her daughters out of the house by the 1st opportunity so that they had to enter domestic service (there was little opportunity of other employment).

I also read that in some places widows were provided for by the community but had to take care of the orphans in return. 

And what about the real "single moms", the euphemism invented for the one reason only, to take away the stigma?

A woman who produced an illegitimate kid was obviously deemed unfit to raise him herself. If the family were poor the child was taken away and placed in an orphanage. The mother then had to work, and pay out of her wages for the upkeep for her bastard. She was allowed to visit him from time to time. If she married (and yes, it did happen even back then), she had to quit her employment (married women couldn't work, of course), so it was up to her husband to pay for it. The child still stayed in an orphanage though.

Again, I heard stories of a distant relative somewhere in the 1920 or thereabout who always claimed that her pregnancy was the result of r8pe (though the man was never prosecuted) yet it didn't help her. She later married and her husband kept paying to the orphanage. Germany, btw, had similar laws about male guardians, and they were abolished only somewhere in the 1980s from what I heard.

So that was the law and tradition about single moms back then. I'm not implying we should go back to it, just providing the info:)

Why Is Modesty Important?

 Or rather is it at all? Sorry for the lack of effort-posting but we are in the middle of a heatwave right now. Yesterday my resolve broke down and I switched airco on for several hours, which cost me 4extra kwh. I'm still holding out as of now but probably, not for a long time:) And my husband is working shorter hours this week. Still, here it comes: hot weather always brings with it the issue of modesty, so I'm going to write a couple of thoughts on the matter. Please don't throw stones as I feel like I'm melting right now - it's close to +30*C in my bedroom where I'm typing this. 

Why is modesty important? Or is it really? Many Christian (and all Islamic) authors approach this topic from the angle of immodest women provoking male passions. To this feminists scornfully reply that it's up to men to control themselves and how it only proves that men are pigs. Since most Western women, even Christians, are feminists at least to a degree they support this position and act accordingly.

Another argument is much less known, but I saw it put forward by some fundie Christians and others: immodesty hurts women first of all. Apparently, they believe and teach that when a woman wear pants and/or short/tight skirts and dresses instead of long flowing garments it can affect her fertility to the point of making her infertile and/or cause specific female problems. Those who are into energy healing and this kind of stuff may add that wearing long flowing skirts and dresses allow the woman to draw the energy of Earth or something to the point. Those who are more scientifically minded speak about hormone disbalance.

There is also a more sophisticated version of this argument. It goes like this: men and women exchange s8xual energy which ideally, should happen withing marriage where both get something out of the arrangement. When a woman goes around scantily dressed, she allows strange men to use this energy without giving anything back, while other women will get envious and take some of it, too. As a result, her female energy is depleted which leads to health and other problems. I know it sound heathenish but bear with me:)

Thus we have 2 arguments representing the dangers of immodesty from a male and a female point of view, but what if there is more to this issue? And here I'm going to write about a theory of mine. Please keep in mind it's just that, a theory.  

What if the society as a whole is  affected by female immodesty? You see, there is this Nephilim story from both the OT and the Apocripha about fallen angels lusting after mortal women and taking them as wives, which presumably, was one of the causes of the Flood? We then have the text from the Corinthians telling women to cover themselves (their head/hair) "because of the Angels". While it's commonly understood that if  such unnatural unions ever took place, it's impossible now, the last text at least hints that female beauty somehow has a certain type of influence. 

So it could very well be that half-dressed and sometimes nearly naked females which we all daily encounter basically everywhere, draw the certain kind of supernatural beings to them which then produce a nefarious influence  on the world around them. And if we look around, there appears at least some truth to the statement. So here is food for thought: cover yourself going outside because you never know who may be looking.

Constitution Isn't Going To Save You

 Enrique Tarrio gets 22 years in prison

Here is a good article from BlazeMedia:

 If you want a good laugh, you can enter the phrase “sovereign citizens” into your favorite video search engine and find endless hours of delusional people being arrested by the police. Sovereign citizens are a loose collection of individuals who believe they can evade the authority of the police by claiming exemption from the legal code. 

There is no central text explaining the sovereign citizen ideology, but one branch holds that America's first governing document, the Articles of Confederation, was never legally dissolved, meaning that those who claim “sovereign citizenship” are not subject to the law as currently enforced under the Constitution. Though it has never stopped a single arrest, devotees of this doctrine will confidently state their case as they resist detainment, treating the legal assertion as magic spell meant to halt a police officer in his tracks. While delusional people attempting to argue their way out of an arrest can create a hilarious spectacle, the phenomenon can also teach an important lesson about placing one’s faith in a document that no longer has the authority to restrict power...

The current American conservative has an uncomfortable amount in common with the sovereign citizen crowd. The conservative remembers and cherishes the freedoms that were enshrined in the original constitution and believes that their presence in that founding text should defend those rights in perpetuity. Unfortunately, those rights were not vigorously defended by previous generations, and the document that was supposed to protect them has been subordinated to a new order with its own priorities. Conservatives will impotently recite sections of the Bill of Rights to government officials who care about nothing but the power to advance their own agenda...

 If those on the right want to see the freedoms returned, they will need to fight for every inch. Not just in the sphere of law and politics, but in every aspect of culture, religion, and education... 

Will Evangelical Church Drift To The Right?

 The Rise and Fall of the Evangelical Elite

 It was the elite evangelical response to COVID that finally destroyed their credibility. It solidified the already widespread suspicion that their role in society is to provide a theological veneer to regime narratives. They exhibited naïve trust in and absurd deference to institutions and the “experts” who openly lied and laughed off charges of tyranny as they closed playgrounds and schools, dumped sand in skate parks, locked people in their homes, and insisted that loved ones die alone. One notable pastor-theologian, Jonathan Leeman, authored several articles against churches that defied COVID restrictions, including against MacArthur’s church. In the height of the pandemic and while his church was forbidden from meeting, Leeman (being very on-brand) attended a crowded BLM protest, even inviting his church to join him...

It is now plain to everyone that the obsequiousness of the evangelical elite to their hostile secularist counterparts is harmful to the country, to churches, and to the advance of the Gospel. The evangelical elite know that they are in decline.

The energy in American evangelicalism is now on the Christian right, who have become emboldened in their efforts to return America to its heritage of faith. They affirm the goodness of Christian nations, an assertive Christian politics, and the predominate heritage of faith in American history. For them, Christian politics is not loser theology, nor meant only to carve out a safe existence for churches. The goal is the complete re-Christianization of civil society, institutions, and government.

 (emphasis mine)

One can only hope...