Selective amnesia my foot!

You know, I was thinking about starting a blog entitled "Stuff I really, REALLY don't like". But, honestly, that list's been growing so much since, oh, I don't know, about 2008 on that I'm afraid I will sound like the most negative person on earth! But there are some things I REALLY feel the need to talk about… Take Dinesh D'Souza for example… I really LOVE this guy! He is a conservative, intelligent man who also happens to be a Christian and happens to have had an almost prophetic, bang on prediction about would be king Obama in his mega successful documentary 2016: Obama's America. What I don't like? His personal choices, of late… Here's what I mean. Dinesh married his wife Dixie in 1992. They have a daughter together. Now Dinesh is well known for his conservative views, not just in the arena of politics but also in the arena of life in general. He is a promoter of conventional marriage and Christian values as they apply to the commitment of marriage. Except in 2012 he seemed to have conveniently developed amnesia regarding those values because he showed up at some Christian convention with a woman who wasn't his wife, who was 23 years his junior and whom he proceeded to introduce as his fiancé… And if that is not problematic enough, at the time he was still married to his wife of 20 years and the trophy arm candy in question was married to her husband of about 10 months… When people started to, shall we say, state the obvious, Dinesh proceeded to say that he didn't know that it was frowned upon in Christian circles to be engaged to one woman while married to another. Really, Dinesh?? This is the best explanation a man of your intelligence and character could come up with? OK… Well, he may have been "casual" about what is and is not frowned upon in Christian circles but it cost him his lucrative 7 figure salary presidency of The King's College in NY and earned him a sound thrashing in liberal publications. Here's the thing: there is a real problem that arises when Christian conservative men have trouble keeping their pythons tucked in and neatly zipped up inside their pants – they boycott and undermine the very principles and conservative values they are trying to promote! Not to mention they obliterate their own credibility and become fodder for the pshyco liberals who are desperately looking for any slip up whatsoever to use as a means to distract everyone from the real issues that are plaguing this nation in this present darkness! And, bonus, they cripple the rest of us who are promoting and supporting those conservative men when liberals start yelling in our faces and wave around their indiscretions and we become powerless to deny or justify what they did. Because how can any conservative woman or man for that matter justify such behavior and not come off as a complete and utter hypocrite! When a man like, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger who’s a Christian and who spent more than half his life supporting and promoting conservative values while being right smack dab in the middle of the Kennedy Camelot, one of the most liberal families in this country and married to one of the more liberal women from this liberal family, turns out to have fathered a “love” child with the maid while married to Maria Shriver, he and his ideas and values, instead of affecting the change we need, become nothing more than the punch line of liberal jokes! And, all of the sudden Maria’s off the charts pshyco liberal publication, The Shriver Report doesn’t seem that bad anymore, even to conservative women, who are now more focused on the hardship Arnold’s betrayal caused her than on the skewed views and Nazi feminism of this publication on every issue pertaining to women’s lives. And why shouldn’t they be? Because, while I do concede that being married to a liberal feminist is more than likely NOT a bed of roses and it probably involves a great deal of bitchiness, emasculation and verbal castration, that is still not a reason to be deceitful and unfaithful to a woman you picked, knowing very well her political leanings. In fact, conservative men and women and especially Christian conservative men and women who are in politics or have influential positions in the public eye, MUST realize that what goes on behind closed doors IS important. They must realize that now more than ever, this country needs solid conservatives with solid lives, void of closet skeletons that can help pull this country out of the black hole vortex that Obama and his cronies have pushed us into! And while I am aware that we are all human and we all make mistakes and that no one is perfect, I am also painfully aware that the devil is now using his puppets more aggressively than he’s ever used them before in order to bring about the complete destruction of this magnificent land. And as such, Christian conservatives HAVE GOT to buckle down and hold on to Jesus stronger than they have ever been! So Dinesh, you may have had a little moment of temporary insanity, and you may have said that you were not, in fact, having an affair and you may say you and your wife were already separated during that insanity moment… But since the divorce is not final and you did break off the “engagement” to the woman who was a whopping 9 YEARS OLD when you got married the first time, I respectfully suggest you get back on the right “horse” so to speak and do us Christian conservatives proud again! Because while I do not believe the whole voter fraud thing and I’m happy to defend you on that one, there is no way I can defend that… other… thing, or the lame-a** explanation you gave for it!

Laura      

I love you with the love of the Lord...

"In Jesus Christ the reality of God has entered into the reality of this world. The place where the questions about the reality of God and about the reality of the world are answered at the same time is characterized solely by the name: Jesus Christ. God and the world are enclosed in this name . . . we cannot speak rightly of either God or the world without speaking of Jesus Christ. All concepts of reality that ignore Jesus Christ are abstractions. As long as Christ and the world are conceived as two realms bumping against and repelling each other, we are left with only the following options. Giving up on reality as a whole, either we place ourselves in one of the two realms, wanting Christ without the world or the world without Christ—and in both cases we deceive ourselves. . . . There are not two realities, but only one reality, and that is God’s reality revealed in Christ in the reality of the world. Partaking in Christ, we stand at the same time in the reality of God and in the reality of the world. The reality of Christ embraces the reality of the world in itself. The world has no reality of its own independent of God’s revelation in Christ. . . . The theme of two realms, which has dominated the history of the church again and again, is foreign to the New Testament.

Such people neither steal, nor murder, nor commit adultery, but do good according to their abilities. But they must close their eyes and ears to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep their private blamelessness clean from the stains of responsible action in the world. In all that they do, what they fail to do will not let them rest. They will either be destroyed by this unrest, or they will become the most hypocritical of all Pharisees." Dietrich Bonhoeffer

For the longest time, but especially after the 2008 presidential elections, I have lived with this nagging feeling in the back of my head that, despite the fact that I am a Christian and I love the Lord, I am somehow, not spiritual enough, not relying on Jesus enough, not trusting Him enough. The reasons for this feeling? First, my tendency to focus on the present darkness of the world and be angered by what I perceive to be an irritating apathy amongst Christians here and everywhere else in the world regarding what is happening and second the barrage of statements in songs, FB postings, Christian articles, private conversations with friends, etc. that all seem to say exactly the same things: "Trust God…", "This is supposed to happen", "What can we do other than pray and believe God will take care of us", "If this is God's will for the end of times there is nothing we can do to stop it", etc., etc.… Being flooded with such things, having the desire to do the right thing and feeling guilty about not "trusting" God more, lately I actually started to believe I am, indeed, going about this all wrong, that I am too much "of the world" and that I do need to just trust God while continuing to live my life as if nothing is happening. Because, after all, the end is inevitable and God places leaders in their place and we have to respect them and so on and so forth! But then my husband started reading the book Bonhoeffer, a biography written by Eric Metaxas and as he started coming across some of Bonhoeffer’s quotes, he also started seeing striking similarities between Bonhoeffer’s way of thinking and expression regarding Christianity and Christians as it pertained to the times he lived in and my own way of thinking and expression as it pertains to the times we are living in now. My husband read to me many passages from this book but the above quote commanded my attention especially. Now, I have no wish to be insulting or offensive to anyone or prideful in any way. But… I have always had a tendency to be my own worst critic, to believe that if it looks like I am at fault in something or if it looks like I am doing something wrong then, more likely, I am! And this time around was no different. However, as I read the above quote a light bulb turned on in my head and I felt liberated! You see, Bonhoeffer lived in Hitler’s time and was a Christian and a minister of the word, a pastor. But he did not become known for his pastorship but rather for his dislike of what his people, the Christians of the time, did or rather did not do when Hitler started to take the steps necessary to becoming a vicious dictator who killed 6 million Jews and countless of his own German countrymen that disagreed with him and, also, for his own stand against this cruel dictator, which ultimately cost him his life. He saw that at a point in time when the Christians still had power, when they could have spoken up against what they were seeing loud enough that they could have been heard and brought about change, most of them either chose to turn a blind eye to the truth and follow and agree with the oppressors or buried their heads in the ground as it were, lived in a bubble of wholesome sounding spiritual words, invoking such things as “God is in control” and ultimately sinning against their own conscience. Because in the end, when Hitler’s thirst for blood became all encompassing and his vengeful and suspicious mind played only the refrain of absolute obedience, it was no longer enough that people just sat on the sidelines, neither for nor against his policies and beliefs but they had to agree wholeheartedly with him or be executed. The point being that in situations such as these, whether we take a stand from the beginning of our own accord or are forced to take a stand in the end by the very usurpers we pretended are not “that bad” after all, we will have to take a stand! Fast forward to today… I personally believe that we live in a time very similar to the one Bonhoeffer lived in and as such we are standing upon the brink of seeing everything we hold dear be trampled under foot by evil men with evil agendas until there is nothing left of the life we knew and loved. But, by the same token, we are also, I believe at that point in time when we can still stand up, speak, do, refuse to ignore and actually be heard!! And as Bonhoeffer before me, the Christian “bubble” in which everything except prayer, is left up to God to do for us, angers me! Because are we not His hands? Are we not His feet and His mouth? Are we not His body? Are we really going to just sit on the side lines, pretending that things aren’t as bad as they seem, chucking it all up to “God is in control” and “it’s happened before and it all worked out”, making those among us who dare to point out the truth feel guilty about “being too involved in the world” and “not having enough trust in God”??? Are we really going to pretend that being “a child of the most High God” means a cushy existence with big houses, new cars, big TV’s and every comfort known to men at our disposal while touting self righteous beliefs fueled by misunderstood scriptures taken out of context to suit our own desires and not speak against evil for fear that our existence will be disturbed? Are we really going to have the mentality that says let’s live our lives, eating, drinking, having a good time with our friends, getting together in big, expensive buildings to “worship” God while everything is crumbling around us because, after all we live here, in America where we have laws against such Machiavellian things like the ones Hitler did?? How do we “worship” God? What does “worship” really mean? Going to church every Sunday, having spiritual gatherings during the week, getting fat on the word of God and having prayer groups while quoting scriptures to those in need or those who’s eyes are actually opened to the realities around us?? I am not saying that I have the answer as to exactly what we can DO other than prayer and belief but I am saying that refusing to even do as small a thing as being vocal against what is happening because we don’t want to surround ourselves with “negativity” is wrong! I am saying that putting our heads in the sand and focusing only on our own personal little worlds while ignoring reality is wrong!! I am saying that spouting spiritual sounding words in order to try and silence those who are vocal about the reality around us because they are stirring within us questions and fears we would rather not deal with, is wrong!! I know there must be a balance, I know that no one can survive and stay sane today on a steady diet of only the evil surrounding us. I know that trust in God and belief in His love and His plan is vital in times such as these. But I also know that we have a duty as Christians to step off the hallelujah cloud and into reality and, at the very least, stand up, even if only verbally, against the evil around us! I actually do believe what Bonhoeffer said – that if we don’t, if we choose to, as he put it, close our eyes and ears to the injustice around us, we will have to do so only at the cost of self-deception, and that in all that we do, what we fail to do will not let us rest. And, in the end we will either be destroyed by this unrest, or we will become the most hypocritical of all Pharisees. These are his words but I believe they could be true and I believe that these things he said may be one reason why many Christians today feel unfulfilled and tired, even while doing “good works”, with a constant gnawing at their soul that they cannot explain which leads them either to apathy and sin or to super spirituality and self righteousness which are also in themselves sinful! So what is the answer? I am not sure… But I am convinced that each of us can learn something from the above Bonhoeffer quote and that we can come before God and with a truly sincere heart ask Him to reveal what He would have us DO! And that we can pray that He will give us the strength to recognize the right thing to do and the strength to do it in every situation that comes before us, regardless of fears, regardless of what is popular, regardless of whom we end up offending!  

Laura