The Image of God

Today, at the American Thinker in a post by Greg Maresca entitled The post-Roe landscape. I won't comment on most of the article. Gentle readers can read the grim statistics for themselves.

What I wish to comment on is another grim statistic, the lack of training in Christianity. Namely, that God created man in his own image. Every time an innocent human being is killed, another image of God is killed. While self-defense is allowed, mere mortals are not authorized to out and out murder our children. Indeed, God destroyed people who worshipped Molech, a "god" that demanded people throw their first born into the idol's fire in its belly.

He is Risen; He is Risen indeed

 He is Risen; He is Risen indeed!  Thus, Christians around the world greet each other on Easter.  Meanwhile, at the American Thinker J.B. Shurk points out that Leftism Fears Jesus Christ. You know it's true by the way the Left hates and resents us.  Why you would almost think the Devil inspired them.

On Easter, the holiest day of the year, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Savior, and Treasure. Just saying those words out loud — Lord…Savior…Treasure — it is easy to recognize why modern socialist governments find Christianity so threatening. For if He is the King of kings, then all of our would-be masters in this world are pale imposters. If He alone is the Way and the Truth and the Life, then the marble halls of Big Government are just false paths leading to false idols that promise false salvation. If He is the only Treasure, then all of the things that governments do to make us envious, resentful, and hateful toward one another are tricks and lies meant to blind us from the Truth.

A Canadian writer named Dimpee Brar wrote a beautiful and insightful essay on this subject last month. In that essay, Brar draws attention to the more than eighty churches that have been set on fire across her country. She deftly describes how government-sponsored lies instigated these attacks on Christian houses of worship and argues persuasively that Marxist-globalist governments view Christ, Christians, and Christianity as foremost enemies.

Shurk heavily quotes from Brar's essay, much of which is about Canada itself, though we here in the U.S. should be wary because the Democrats have threatened to bring on even worse to us if they win back power. And these threats are not empty. Every one should be taken seriously.

But, the fact is that Jesus can be found not in church buildings. These are built rather for our convenience. God is everywhere and Jesus promises to be present wherever two or three are gathered in His name. We may need to revert to the house churches, or as St. Paul did, rent out spaces in commercial buildings to hold services, and to distribute the Lord's Supper. We may have to go underground to keep our faith alive. So be it. Christ did not promise us prosperity and a care-free life.

Reflections on Good Friday

 Today is Good Friday, the anniversary of the day Christ died on the cross for us and our sins.  It is the most holy day of the year for us Christians, and it has nothing to do with bunnies and eggs.  It is a day when the paraments come off the alters in the Lutheran churches.  Our Lord has died a cruel and undeserved death and will not rise until the third day.  His disciples are huddled in the upper room, sure the authorities are coming for them next. 

Kevin McCollough, at Townhall.com has an article about an incident that occurred while Jesus was hanging on the cross between two thieves. The article is entitled A Thief's Impossible Hope. One thief, representing the world and its sinfulness mocks Jesus and says "If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross and save yourself and us." But McCollough spends his time discussing the other thief, the one who at the last, believed.

The pain is constant now—no waves, no relief, just a steady, crushing reality that presses in from every side. His body is failing. His breaths are shallow. The end is not coming—it’s here.

And yet—something inside him is awakening. Not physically. Spiritually.

Because after everything he’s seen… after everything he’s heard… after the clarity that has broken through his denial and exposed his guilt… something unthinkable begins to rise: Hope.

...snip...

What if this isn’t the end? What if the man next to him… is exactly who He claims to be? What if the kingdom He spoke about… is real? What if death… isn’t the final word?

Do you understand how radical that is in this moment? Because everything around him screams finality.

The nails say it. The blood says it. The crowd says it.

This is the end.

And yet, somehow, the thief is beginning to believe the opposite. Not because of what he feels. But because of what he’s seen.

...snip...

He’s seen a man suffer without hatred. He’s heard forgiveness spoken over executioners. He’s witnessed a kind of authority that doesn’t look like power—but is power. And now, standing at the edge of eternity, he makes a leap.

Not of logic. Of faith. “Jesus… remember me… when you come into your kingdom.”

Jesus does not disappoint. Despite the gruesome torture he has been through, despite the unbearable pain, he grants this man's dying wish before he dies, just as he promises to save everyone who believes and is baptized.

When a man confronts his own sins, some that he may not know, it is enough to drive that man to his knees. But we are saved from hell by a loving God, whose grace is almost unbelievable. What love is this, that Christ was willing to die in this most horrible of ways, to save us from ourselves.

Update:  Please read also Where Evil Became Victory: Good Friday for a Suffering World, by Sarah Holliday.

Palm Sunday and the Start of Holy Week

 Today at Townhall.com Kevin McCollough has a post entitled The Madness of Palm Sunday in which he points out that Jesus knew, even provoked his own crucifixion, and yet he did in anyway. Not out of some form of madness, like the people who commit suicide by cop, but out of love.

Jesus rides into Jerusalem, not in secrecy, not under cover of darkness—but in full view of a swelling, electric crowd. They line the streets. They wave palm branches. They throw their cloaks on the ground. They shout, “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”

They are celebrating Him like a king.

And they’re right to do so.

This wasn’t random. This wasn’t accidental. This wasn’t Jesus getting swept up in a moment. This was deliberate, calculated, prophetic fulfillment. Centuries earlier, the prophet Zechariah had written that Israel’s king would come riding on a donkey—gentle, humble, unmistakable. And here He was, doing exactly that.

Not on a war horse. Not with an army. But on a borrowed donkey.

Because He wasn’t coming to conquer Rome.

He was coming to conquer something far more permanent.

...snip...

Without the cross, there is no forgiveness.

Without His suffering, there is no healing.

Without His death, there is no life.

The madness of Palm Sunday is that the King is being celebrated by people who don’t understand the cost He’s about to pay for them.

Many people suffer, sometimes seeming unbearable pain. Jesus suffered all that. But his true suffering was the abandonment by the Father. Imagine if your father suddenly abandoned you, said "I don't know you" and turned his back to you. You would be hurt. Now imagine your father is the creator of the universe. This made His suffering so much worse. It makes our suffering seem like a pin prick.

We know how the story ends, and we are both sorrowful, and overjoyed. Please, This week, I urge you to consider this, and to pray on it.

How Should a Christian Vote

 I was reading the American Thinker today when I noticed a very interesting post by Kevin Finn entitled, I'm not a Democrat, I'm a Catholic. Well, first he means he's a Roman Catholic, for we Lutherans are "catholic" as well as other denominations that subscribe to the Apostles and Nicaean creeds. But the Roman church has the most well-developed ideas on how a Christian should vote of which I can think.

As a Catholic (and a sinner in need of redemption and God’s mercy), I can’t support the things that Democrats support. I think cutting off an unborn child’s arms and legs, crushing her skull, sucking out her brains, and then selling her organs for profit is evil. I think chemically sterilizing middle school kids and surgically mutilating their genitals sounds like a plan from the pits of Hell. I think it’s wicked to put graphic pornography in K–12 school classrooms in order to teach underage kids the finer points of rape and incest.

I think it was pure evil to open up the borders and allow millions of unvetted, unvaccinated people to enter. That crowd included uncounted numbers of MS-13; Tren de Aragua; and single, military-aged men from countries hostile to the U.S. I have nothing but revulsion and loathing for Joe Biden, Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett, Hussein Obama, and whoever else was running the country during the last “administration” to cavalierly disregard the 300,000 children who went missing during their tenure. Tom Homan has told us that many of those kids were sold into prostitution and slave labor, although he and his team have managed to rescue roughly half of them so far.

When you put it like that, and that is exactly how it is, a vote for a Democrat candidate is a vote for these evil things. You become, in lawyer talk, an accessory to a crime. You are therefore just as guilty as the one who committed the crime.

The author asked a friend and a Catholic how he justified his vote for Democrats. His friend's reply was "Trump's worse." But is he?

I know! Trump got Glen Simpson and Fusion GPS to fabricate a phony manuscript that falsely implicated Biden of inappropriate ties with Vladmir Putin. Then he fed that document to the media, and used the resulting news stories to justify lying to a federal judge to obtain permission to surveil Biden’s campaign headquarters. Then he used the “Two-Step” rule to expand that surveillance to many of Biden’s staffers. And then he fabricated other crimes and arrested many Biden associates and, with a complicit media establishment, subjected those associates to trials in Trump-friendly courtrooms.

Oops! Sorry! That wasn’t Trump, was it? No, that was Hussein Obama, Hillary Clinton, and their party.

You see, Donald Trump and a few conservative members of Congress and some Republican governors want to put an end to all of that. To a leftist, that makes Republicans worse than Democrats.

You can read what Catholic moral theology teaches about how to discern what candidate to vote for. Unfortunately, as Paul said, each of us has fallen short of the glory of God, and all men need God's grace. But the defiance of His law, not through human weakness, but to cynically get votes, says that Pelosi, Biden and others are following the Devil's path, and Christians should not vote for them or people like them.

Women Are Intended to Raise Children Under the Protection of Their Husbands

 I was intrigued by a post at the American Thinker today by Mike McDaniel entitled The Biden CIA didn't like motherhood. This after our church just celebrated another baptism, which I think might be our pastor's favorite duty. What's not to like about women who perform in the manner which God intended?

McDaniel has the story:

But why would the FBI, with tens, even hundreds, of thousands of Islamist terrorists and Chinese spies pouring over the border unvetted and unidentified waste time focusing on Catholics? Those traditional radicals appreciated the Latin Mass, which the DEI dimwits at multiple FBI field offices apparently saw as an imminent threat to America, or at least to the Biden’s Handlers’ Administration. Somehow, I doubt many, if any, FBI agents, spoke Latin.

Bizarrely, the FBI thought those Catholics were somehow aligned with White Supremacists. How they got that idea remains unexplained.

...snip...

The memo, titled “Women Advancing White Racially and Ethnically Motivated Extremist Radicalization and Recruitment,” tarnished females who hold traditional values.

“REMVE”?! Has any sapient being outside the CIA and Biden’s Handlers ever heard, or understood, that acronym? Does such an organization exist? Apparently, the CIA imagined it into existence.

...snip...

So. If you’re a white, traditional American mother who might be “RMVE-sympathetic," even though you’ve never heard that acronym and have no idea what it might mean, and you don’t advocate violence, as most traditional mothers don’t, you “amplify RMVE narratives regarding perceptions of racial and ethnic hierarchy, as well as perceived threats from those they see as advocating multiculturalism and globalization.”

What?!

I will end it there on McDaniel's "What1?."  I suspect that most girls want to get married, have and raise children. It is why God created us male and female. He could have created us male only, don't you know. But he saw fit to create us male and female with slightly different needs and desires. It is only when young women go off to college and are bombarded by the feminazis that they distain their primary calling.

The Greatest Threat To Our Nation Is Islam

 I have been having major health issues, so have not been able to comment on anything, let alone readd as much as I have in the past.  In any case, I have probably said everything that I needed to say.  But if I haven't please go read Eric Utter at the  American Thinker today entitled A Devolutionary War?

Muslims claim to love the LORD but then deny that He was indeed God in the flesh. They even deny that He died and was buried and rose on the third day. This is typical Muslim taqiyya. They lie to Christians. We should recognize that Muslims worship, whether they realize it or not, the Devil.

Utter writes:

The gravest danger to Western countries going forward is the rapid Islamization of their nations. No matter what Keir Starmer, Mark Carney, Catherine Connolly, or Zohran Mamdani say, this is inarguably the case.

Look at the countries from which Muslims come. Look at the U.K., Canada, Ireland, or New York City, three or four decades ago and compare that to what they look like today. Same for France, Germany, Sweden, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, New Zealand, Australia, and others.

It is shocking. It is embarrassing. It is a continually unfolding invasion. It is leading to the rapid devolution of Western nations and the consequent degradation of quality of life, safety, and even character. It is a crime, one for which these nations’ leaders should be held accountable. These countries should look to the American Revolution for guidance on how to protect individual freedoms and counteract invasions and usurpations. So should many more Americans, for that matter.

As for the word "devonutionary" in the title of his article, when was the last time you heard of anything useful coming out of a Muslim nation. They claim algebra was developed by Muslims in the dark ages. Perhaps, but that is a long, long time ago. What Islam brings is death, destruction, and hatred of everything Christiandom has brought forth.