How interesting that I get such inspiration from a blogger from across the ocean. Regular readers (all 16 of you) might be familiar with the name Prof. Bruce Charlton. He's an educator and scholar with a lot of wisdom to impart. His recent piece called Advocacy of sin is the worst evil: worse than actually sinning really struck a nerve with me. The implications are deep, but the evidence of its truth is so in your face as to be overwhelming.
Where does tolerance end and advocacy begin. Will simply watching the spectacle of evil in my midst as it swirls through my life make me an advocate? Am I supposed to do something? Do I cast judgement on those who do evil, advocate evil? Am I not the worst of sinners if I do?We are told not to judge, that God is the only judge. We are supposed assign unsurpassable worth to our friends and enemies alike, to acknowledge that we are the worst of sinners and have no right to look down on or feign righteousness over others. This of course is very hard to do. We have an innate sense of right and wrong, good and evil, we know we are "better" than real evil doers. But are we?
Charlton pins a lot of the evil in this world on the mass media - and rightly so. Since the media is not one person but a collective it is safe to pass judgement - or practice discernment if you will.
To Charlton's point it's a class of elites and intellectuals that stay above fray of debauchery, crime and violence while advocating the same from their ivory towers or media empire boardrooms. The devolution of America and the West is a deliberate act with a deliberate cause, but always couched in the language of fairness, equality and tolerance. Not to go along is to be targeted, labeled and intolerant bigot and destroyed - if necessary.
The two passages from the article that bring it home for me are here:
"The creed of the modern intellectual is implied-despair. Not the direct preaching of despair as a principle - but rather preaching of a set of non-beliefs that must lead to despair - because there is nowhere else for them to lead..."
"Having demolished (to their own satisfaction) the objective validity of God; the intellectual elites have recently demolished (to their own satisfaction) the objective good of marriage and family - and they are left only with a life based-on 'work and leisure'..."
We live in a society that calls advocating for fetuses and adoption a war on women. A world that has devalued men and boys, especially black men, to the point where many have checked out, preferring to be neither a husband nor a provider. A culture where white men choose to remain in a state of perpetual adolescence. Today a man can't say an innocuous word like honey or sweetheart in the presence of a woman, but a powerful female politician gets no push back when accusing a male politician of "showing women the back of his hand" and "grabbing her hair and dragging her back to the stone-age" with no evidence that any of it is true. Seems more like a war on men to me.
We see in this country the race baiters, who foment discord at every opportunity, never attempting to build on the tremendous societal progress made over the last 50 years. They support politicians who through destructive policies have done far more damage to minorities that the white majority ever did. The intact black family is a rarity in the United States. It's the intellectuals who have prescribed the replacement of the husband with a welfare check and food stamps. It was the intellectuals and the elites that destroyed public education in the inner city and removed any semblance of God from public discourse. In the process they destroy the hope of millions.
Do we need to ask where this is being driven from? Do we not know how the brainwashing happens? The enemy works through the mass media. In recent decades the facade has been removed. No longer is there any veil over the inversion of good and evil. In fact the inversion is celebrated, the anti-hero reigns.
The news media lies by omission, ignoring any story that belies the narrative they prefer. Good men, decent men like Mitt Romney are sullied by far less evidence than is proven against the media's own political darlings. Any media source that even slightly bucks the trend like Fox News or talk show hosts or certain Internet websites, find themselves slandered and marginalized in every possible discourse whether deserved or not - to the point that most the hatred comes from people who have never watched, listened or read them. Television and movies glorify graphic violence while the stars themselves decry guns and the scary redneck conservatives that venerate them. Family friendly (God friendly) movies often can't get funding, or distribution. If they do make mass distribution they are savaged by media critics while Quentin Tarantino movies are fawned over. Inversion anyone???
The mass media dominates the distribution of information, fads and fashion, it's ubiquitous and overwhelming - and enticing!
Getting to the point (finally) I am just as enticed, dazzled and susceptible to the mass media and cultural proclivities as anyone. I am human and a sinner after all. But am I an advocate for evil? I don't think so - I hope not. I have watched violent and overtly sexual movies and TV shows and enjoyed some of them. I have refused to watch others because they offend me. Does that balance it out? Are their areas in my life where I am inadvertently, unconsciously advocating evil? I work in an industry that many have called evil - I don't necessarily see it that way, but who is to say? It's confusing.
I understand we live life in the fog of war, a cosmic war, a battle of good and evil where the players can be disguised. All we can do in the world awash in evil is to try to not consciously aid it. I don't know what else to do. I can only hope that my loved ones will point out those times I go astray.
Ugh
1 comment:
Excellent post, Craig, but they always are here.
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