Father, command me what You will, and make me love your command

 Andrea Widburg, always a thoughtful columnist, has a slightly different take on the China issue in China's disasterous one child policy is finally starting to kick in. Widburg in turn points to a piece by Daniel Greenfield entitled Can Feminism Destroy China?

I've long known that China's one-child policy, which resulted in the abortion of up to 40 million female babies, was going to have far-reaching consequences. My assumption was that women would become more valuable and be better treated, but I didn't realize that their increased value might spell the beginning of the end of the Communist Party.

Greenfield, however, suggests that the massive demographic imbalance, with men far outnumbering women, paired with a rising yuppie class that's materialistic and creates women who have no interest in marriage and children, is causing a slo-mo collapse in China. This is true despite Xi Jinping's bluster and military expenditures.

You will want to read both articles. I still feel that China is dangerous, perhaps more so because the CCP may have trouble holding onto power. Under such conditions, it is not out of the question that China may strike out as a way to distract its people from problems at home. And while China's army may be huge, the fact is that it hasn't actually fought a war against a peer. But the U. S. military is not in great shape either.

One thing that is interesting is that the Chinese middle class has been shorn of faith, leaving them with no real purpose in life.  The same thing however, is happening in the United States.  Christians need to pray every day "Father, command me what You will, and make me love your command."

We Have Been All Too Compliant With Gangster Government

I have been keeping an eye askance at China. China is certainly populous, has a huge army, a navy with growing sophistication, and as we all heard, had recently tested hypersonic missiles. And China's leader, Xi Jinping has lately been rattling sabers. Then there is our own Dear Leader who some believe has been compromised by China. Which makes war with China a possibility.

Interestingly, Uldis Sprogis has an article on China today at the American Thinker entitled China Is In Deep Trouble. According to Sprogis, Xi's need to control everything and everyone is driving money and investment out of China. At the same time, Xi faces competition from inside the CCP.

Xi Jinping’s crackdown on almost everything in China may be a sign of insecurity or tremendous fear of the monied business sector. Tencent and Alibaba were in the 10 topmost valuable tech companies globally in 2020 and today they are no longer on the list. 38% of the apps disappeared from the app market since 2018. China is about to ban offshore trading services, has not only cracked down on big tech but also social media, tuitions, and games. The crackdown was rationalized in the name of common prosperity, but it is more like a vendetta against businesses --which is causing foreign investors to flee China, making Chinese markets lose 1.5 trillion dollars. The crackdown on celebrities resulted in one social media influencer being fined $210 million.

You can read the rest of Sprogis's article for more details. I wanted to point out that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) isn't really a legitimate government as we understand what government is supposed to be. They are not about securing the rights of the Chinese people, or making life better. Which is why they have to steal technology and manufacturing methods. If they were about making life better for the Chinese, these things would naturally flow from the process. After all, the Chinese are a very intelligent people, and when left to their own devices, quite enterprising.

What the CCP is really about is power. According to the Epoch Times in an article on China's "Gang Rules,"

According to Lu, many public comments call the internal Party regulations “gang rule” since the CCP is regarded as “a gangster” since it always deems itself as being greater than the country and it places its internal discipline ahead of state law.

It is unfortunate that this "gangster government" has corrupted our own government.  The Founding Fathers understood this possibility, leading George Washington to note that “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”  We have been all too compliant.  But times demand we pay more attention or we may find ourselves again wasting blood and treasure.

The Meaning of Christmas

God entered history as a Jewish child born to a distant decendent of King David with a mission.  That mission had been foretold  by prophet after prophet.  It was to save mankind from the sin of the world by dying on a cross.  Jesus would live the sinless life that men were supposed to have lived, but were unable to do. But it was by dying on that cross that he did what no man could have done.  In the process, he changed men's and women's lives, and they in turn changed the world.  Scott S. Powell provides a few of the details in a piece at the American Thinker entitled The Advent of Christ Changed the World Forever.

The fact is that Christ affected history with such impact that He split time in two, dividing all human activities and events into happening before His coming (called B.C.) or after His coming (called A.D.). No one else in all of human history did this. Christ had to have had a supernatural impact on the world for that to be accepted.

History shows that Christianity and its Church have brought about more changes for the advancement and benefit of people than any other force or movement in history by an immeasurable factor. What is particularly surprising are the myriad achievements made by committed Christians, which nonbelieving secular-minded people also applaud.

Before Christ, human life was cheap and expendable all over the world. In the Americas, the Near East, Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East child sacrifice was a common phenomenon. Babies, particularly females -- who were considered inferior -- were regularly abandoned. Author George Grant points out: “Before the explosive and penetrating growth of medieval Christian influence, the primordial evils of abortion, infanticide, abandonment, and exposure were a normal part of everyday life.” That changed in the West with the 6th century Christian Byzantine Roman Emperor Justinian whose Law Code declared child abandonment and abortion a crime.

Please go read the entire article.  But what Powell writes about is a small portion of the effects Christ has had on the world.  We often think that the world has always been this way, but it has not.  As Powell points out, before Christ, life was cheap.  And everywhere that Christ is excluded, it still is.

Christ accomplished the mission for which he came into the world. It may not seem like it when we look around every day. It may seem like Satan is winning, but Satan just doesn't recognize that he has already lost. We need to remain faithful, by asking Him each day what we are to do next.

Suffice it to say that life both at home and around the world would no doubt be qualitatively worse today if Christ had never been born and Christianity had not become the greatest spiritual force ever to inspire creative beauty and advance the care and development of people. Indeed, there is reason to sing “Joy to the World.”

Our Problems Are Spiritual Rather Than Physical

On Christmas Eve 2021, we find ourselves at a crossroads: We will either succumb to totalitarianism or we will have to reassert our God given rights, liberties and freedom. Jennifer Jones explains the stakes in this fight at an article at the American Thinker entitled 'Pandemia' and the Psycology of Fear. Those desiring to impose a totalitarian regime on the American people have pounded the drums of fear using elite experts and the media. At least 15 minutes of a typical 30 minute local news broadcast is devoted to Covid, whether it is cases and hospitalizations or other Covid news. They do this to drive fear and induce people to demand the government "do something."

The 20th century was defined, in significant part, by despotic leaders implementing propaganda campaigns to vilify certain groups of people deemed dirty or diseased. The despots didn’t accomplish these campaigns at once but, instead, did so slowly, by conditioning one group of people to believe their ills were caused by another group of people, while conditioning that second group of people to accept increasing levels of human rights violations. Leaders and governments, often working with the healthcare community, carried out campaigns to divide nations and eradicate those deemed “unclean” for the country’s “welfare” and the “future good.”

Today, the same divisive, unrelenting propaganda tactics that past fascists and tyrants used are producing a divided world and prompting actions by some that border on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). What was once considered hypochondriac behavior—masking, social distancing, and repeated hand washing—has become normalized. It identifies the good citizen, even in the face of a waning, weakened virus, heavily mutated from its original strain and far less deadly.

...snip...

You are the ideal citizen if you avoid others, wear a cloth on your face, and take as many jabs as the government deems necessary. Every citizen’s freedom to make healthy choices has been replaced with a legal obligation to be healthy—an obligation that must be fulfilled at all costs, without considering the individual, and without liability for those pushing these “healthy measures” when they cause harm.

Please read and consider the entire article.

Meanwhile, as Jayanta Battacharya, one of the writers of the Great Barrington Declaration has noted We Can Not Stop the Spread of COVID, But We Can End the Pandemic.

I think though, both articles miss the point. Our problems are not really physical, although COVID does exist. Our problems are spiritual rather than physical. They are a result of our reliance on ourselves rather than on our Creator. We have forgotten God. Of course, God does indeed love us...so much that he is willing to let us go our own way if that is what we want. But when we go our own way, things seem to go wrong, whereas when we rely on God, things work out for the best.   It seems to me that the first thing we need to do is to stop being afraid. 

Tucker Carlson Today with Eric Metaxas

 Just watch this episode of Tucker Carlson Today with Eric Metaxas.

More Proof of the Stolen Election

 You might wonder what is going on with issue of the stolen 2020 election.  Well, little bits and snippets keep coming out.  Today, it was New Video Capturing Pennsylvania Officials Hiding Evidence of Alleged Election Fraud, by Margot Cleveland. It hasn't gotten much play in the MSM, but this is big.

New whistleblower videos capture Delaware County, Pennsylvania officials plotting to recreate missing election data from the November 2020 contest, with one official later bragging that the local Democrat district attorney “owes him.” These recordings represent the latest evidence of the alleged fraud officials in the Pennsylvania county undertook to hide widespread violations of the state’s election laws, according to a source familiar with the recordings.

Whistleblower Regina Miller, who worked as a contract employee for Delaware County, secretly recorded the behind-the-scenes videos of election officials after witnessing concerning conduct, according to sources with knowledge of a fraud lawsuit filed last month against county election officials, based in part on the recordings. That lawsuit alleged county election officials destroyed election data in response to a May 21, 2021 Right to Know Request filed with Delaware County that requested the final certified return sheets from the Nov. 3, 2020 general election for all Delaware County precincts, as well as the tapes from the voting machines.

You need to go read the entire article, and watch the videos. The election was stolen, and it will be stolen again unless we do something about it.

To Become Like A Child

 I am now 69 and a half years old, and until today I didn't really understand the saying of Jesus in Matthew 18:

Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me.

After all, reason tells you that becoming again like a child is impossible. You have lived too long, seen too much, and all that you have seen, and maybe done, can not be forgotten. And didn't Jesus also say:

Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

But then, that seems to be the point of Anthony J. DeBlasi's article at the American Thinker today entitled Transcendent Truth. In thinking about God and His work in the world, "reason" only takes you so far. The mind of God is so vastly beyond us, that our ony response is to accept that God loves us and what he commands is for our own good.

Truth, in its meaning as ultimate knowledge of reality and human life, does not conform to the restrictions of rational thought. Rational thought (frequently and loosely referred to as “reasoning”) serves best where it operates within a set of unyielding givens. This is not possible where every critical given is open to endless modification, in any search for ultimate Truth. In short, putting what is all-encompassing within an enclosing mental frame is an exercise in futility. Deliberators on ultimate truth waste their time (and ours) when they fail to see that it does not – can not – proceed from the human mind, a reality confirmed by centuries of consistent failure to succeed. Smart as we are, try as we may, the Truth remains beyond the grasp of philosophy, beyond science, beyond politics, beyond opinion and, face it, beyond argument. What is left for mortals, concerning ultimate knowledge of reality and human life, is to concede that it must come from the mind of God. For it is simply not something we can originate or, what is laughable, establish by consensus.

Which leads to the second question, “Why must we search for the Truth, why don’t we have it?” Well, the answer is, we do have it. The Truth is present in us as a reflection from our Source of Being, something that Plato elaborates on in his “Allegory of the Cave” [The Republic] and mystics have sensed throughout history. That reflection – faint in some, stronger in others – is the inspiration for action tending toward a more fulfilling, happier life than otherwise possible. This “bridge” to our Source, sensed intuitively (not rationalized), is manifest in God-centered religion that, when unadulterated by politics, provides the best available guide to a good life.

...snip...

It is just so for anyone who can sense transcendent truth, even if unable to “reach it” in a purely mental way, which is where faith takes over and the need arises for God-oriented doctrine if the means to best guidance is to resonate with our Source of Being. Reaching for certainty, fulfillment, wellbeing ought to lead to an adaptation to life that draws from our Source, universally acknowledge as the Creator, God. Without a serious effort toward that end, there is stumbling from crisis to crisis with misery for the many.

This is extremely sad, considering the fact that the consciousness of the Creator entered the consciousness of humanity in the event we celebrate as Christmas. Via the birth and life of Christ it became abundantly clear to all what the portal is to “the truth, the way, and the life” [John 14:6] – true happiness, in other words. Yet this divine light on human wellbeing continues to be rejected and reviled wherever it conflicts with selfish gain or unbridled ambition to power. The latest result stares us in the face: a world with no moral anchor, beset with endless confusion, finger-pointing, back-stabbing, suffering and bloodshed.

And this is where becoming like children comes in. Children can accept things that defy logic, like bread and wine being flesh and blood when done in remembrance of Him. Logic says that bread is bread, wine is wine. Jesus says it is His body and blood. To accept that this is Truth is to become like children, or at least to begin to approach that state.

We must fight for life, because the Left will not stop fighting for death

 I was cautiously optimistic that abortion, if not ended in this coutry, would at least be relegated to the states, where some of then would limit the slaughter of unborn babies.  But Christopher Bedford at the The Federalist throws cold water any feeling of optimism that we may have taken from the oral arguments before the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. You can find Bedford's article here.

It’s always cryptic, reading too far into oral arguments. Everything seemed to go well – Justice Brett Kavanaugh (a worry to many pro-lifers) seemed deeply skeptical of the left’s arguments; Chief Justice John Roberts, always cautiously liberal, correctly compared America’s abortion laws to those of China and North Korea.

By the end of the afternoon, folks from NBC News’s legal correspondent Pete King all the way back to our own Mollie Hemingway figured the old ways were DOA.

But things change. In March of 2012, the court heard three days of arguments in a case called National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius – the first major case on the constitutionality of Obamacare. During those six hours of arguments, Roberts was engaged; fired up even. The Affordable Care Act looked to be in trouble.

Three months later, Roberts twisted the Senate’s own words and promises to write a tortured majority opinion upholding President Barack Obama’s signature achievement on absurd legal grounds.

As Bedford notes, we must keep fighting for life, because the Left will not stop fighting for death.

O Come O Come Emmanuel

I was meditating on a hymn that we are going to play at tonight's prayer service.  The hymn is O Come O Come Emmanuel. "O Come O Come Emmanuel (which means God with us) and ransom captive Israel." The first thing is that Israel is a real place, and a real people. But every Christian believer is an Israelite. Now, ancient Isreal was held captive by Babylon and Assyria. But we are held captive still by Satan himself. We can do nothing good unless God does it through us.

Now, in ancient Israel, they sacrificed an unblemished animal as a way to atone for their sins. But one must understand that this was only symbolically. For an animal, no matter how perfect, can not pay for our sins, which is what ransom means. And it is no wonder that God became disgusted with the mass slaughter of animals in His name in His house. The ransom, the price of our sin is our very life, but no one is unblemished. As Paul said, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So, even if everyone were to be killed, that wouldn't save us.

What to do, what to do?

Well, God had already figured it out. When Abraham went up to sacrifice his son Isaac, God provided the sacrifice to Abraham. This was a forshadowing of the ultimate sacrifice of His Son. He would enter history as a child born to a virgin, live a sinless life, and be executed, pouring out His blood as ransom for mankind.

Our response? We can only be grateful. Hallelujah.

Biden isn't the first leader to start a war to distract from falling poll numbers

 So much news that deserves commentary.  There is the so called pandemic, which has always been a pseudo-event,  That fact is becoming obvious even to some Democrats like the Governor of Colorado.  There is the on going speculation that the Supremes will cave and find the Mississipi abortion law unconstitutional.  And what is going on in the Ghislaine Maxwell case?  Why no reporting on that trial?  Or what about the inflation that is impoverishing America's middle class?  Most of those impoverished earned their money by working hard 40-50 hours a week, unlike the Biden family who made their millions through...other means.

Oh, and the Democrats are still holding people that have been charged with such dangerous terroristic things as trespassing in jail under horrendous conditions.  When Russia does that we call them political prisoners.  Does that make the Democrats as bad as the Russians?  

But what I find even more urgent, from an existential threat perspective, is the growing call for the United States to go to war to stop Russia from invading Ukraine.  Like Tucker Carlson and Kurt Schlichter, I think it is important to Tell the Establishment 'No Intervention in Ukraine.' I can see no American interests being threatened in the Ukraine. More to the point, shouldn't those proposing that we go to war with Russia tell us just how many dead kids they think Ukraine is worth?

I’m at a loss as to the concrete American objective in Ukraine. When you ask the question – or the reasonable follow-up of, “Fine, and how many Americans dead or maimed is achieving that objective worth to you?” – the best you get is a blank stare. Usually, you get told you love Putin, as if protecting American lives from being wasted on another impulsive crusade is playing into his bloodstained hands. But we must break this cycle of tragic failure by asking these questions, and demanding the answers.

...snip...

These questions are not unfair or unreasonable, and they are certainly not unpatriotic. But the Beltway brigadiers sure get huffy when you dare pose them. And they positively freak out when you suggest that if America is going to commit itself to the defense of another country that we should go through the process of declaring war to do so. But declaring war means having a debate, and the last thing they want is a debate because, as we all know, there is no critical American objective to be achieved by sending our forces to fight Russia over this border dispute.

Of course the hypocrisy of defending Ukraines border but not defending our own is mind blowing. And by no means is it certain we could win this intervention, what with the current incompetence of our military and their political leaders.  But realize that Biden wouldn't be the first leader to start a war to distract from falling poll numbers.

Please go read the whole article.

How Can We Ever Be Discouraged

 Today is the third Sunday of the Advent season.  Our church of course makes a big celebration out of it.  I have been extremely busy this year so I haven't really sat down to think about it much.  Fortunately, at The Federalist Elly Reynolds has an excellent meditation on the meaning of Advent at Bad News In The World Reminds Us We Still Await a Second Advent. 

As Christians, anticipating the Second Coming of Christ, we are to be in the world, but not of it. We are also to model Christ, which means feeding the hungry, comforting the downtrodden, advocating for those who can't speak, but mostly to hope for the Eternal.  Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, we are and always have been in a war of Good versus evil.  Christ came into the world, took the sin of the world on himself, then rose and ascended to be seated at the right hand of God.  And guess what?  He invites us to be sons and daughters of God with him.

That candid recognition of our world’s imperfection often leaves us discouraged. We are frustrated that so many naively buy the blatant lies of the corporate press and corrupt politicians, and that even basic truths like “don’t kill babies” and “boys and girls are different” meet vicious opposition.

Yet, unlike the utopian dreams of the globalist left, our goal is not and has never been the perfection of the system. Conservatives should not hope to “fix” the world — nor be despondent when it proves unfixable. While we should seek to cultivate and steward our culture and our communities, our inability to shut off the fire hose of foolishness, evil, and sin in our world today should remind us we await another one.

We Are Made to Long for the Eternal

The Advent season is a time to recall the ancient posture of a world awaiting its savior. We recall the longing of a people who had waited 400 years for the voice of God and millennia for his promised salvation.

But there is another Advent, or arrival, to which we look. We long for the day in which we will surrender our earthly failures and enjoy the presence of a heavenly God. Far from discouraging us, the shortcomings of Earth should embolden our hope. If men were angels, neither heaven nor salvation would be necessary.

What with work, with the giving of gifts, with all the terrible news that comes flooding into our houses, it is easy to become distracted. For this reason, one of my favorite advent hymns is Savior of the Nations Come or you can hear the music and see the lyrics here. Thirty-three years after the events of that first Christmas day, with His death on the cross, and subsequent resurrection, He secured a victory for God in this war. The devil doesn't know it yet, but he has already lost. It is this victory that every Christian celebreates at this time of each year. How can we ever be discouraged?

Unless we turn things around, it will only get worse.

J. B Shurk at the American Thinker today entitled The Opposite of Tyranny Is Not Democracy. Shurk is correct. It seems every member of the ruling class and their pupets in the media talks endlessly about "our democracy," which causes me to yell at the TV screen "It's a republic, not a democracy!" As Shurk points out, a democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner:

There will be a lot of discussion in the future about how formerly "free" countries became so totalitarian in their outlooks. By and large, they did so through a quiet linguistic sleight of hand that replaced the language of freedom with the language of democracy. For several hundred years, Westerners have fought first and foremost for freedom while pushing democratic forms of government as procedural mechanisms for keeping power in check. But freedom is not democracy, and until quite recently, most people understood this obvious truth. If you take a hundred people, and fifty-one of them can vote to close your business, how free can you possibly feel? What if they decree that you must pray each day to a framed picture of the "Great Fauci" hanging on the wall? How about if that slim majority decides you shouldn't be allowed to speak your mind and chooses to cut out your tongue instead? What happens when they vote to take away your property, burn your Bible, or chop off your head for backing the wrong leader? At some point, let's hope, even the most ardent defenders of "democracy" might come to the correct conclusion just before the guillotine's blade comes crashing down that inalienable rights and liberties are the true cornerstones of any free society. Without those, a simple majority can be every bit as bloody and unjust as even the worst tyrant. And when it's your head about to fall into the basket, you might very well prefer the benevolent dictator to the authoritarian democracy cheering on your demise.

With the administration keeping political prisoners of the January 6 political rally in solitary confinemnent in very bad conditions, one wonders how they can condemn Communist China or the Iranian regime? Where is their moral authority?  When people's livelyhoods, and thus their lives, are threatened because they refused to be injected with a substance, is there really any difference between the United States and any other tyranny? Once we could condemn the actions of tyrants as we did with the Nuremburg trials.  Could we do this today and not have the world laugh in our faces?

While our "elites" would deny it, our rights are actually inalienable, having been granted to us by our Creator, and no government has the right to deny them for any reason, even a pandemic. But the fact that new variants keep popping up just in time to extend the "pandemic" shows us that COVID has been blown out of proportion for the express purpose of restricting our rights and giving the elites more power. 

Of course, Shurk says all this and more much better than I can, so go read the whole article. And note well that unless we turn things around, it will only get worse.

Trusting in Princes

 According to Tristan Justice at The Federalist, Scared People (Should) Stay Home And Leave Life To The Rest Of Us. I do become weary with this. Why can't the scared simply hide in their homes, and leave the rest of us alone. Why is it always and everywhere the lowest common denominator that determines policies for everyone. Of course I do know why that is. It's all about power. The ruling class gets enough people to cry for the elites to say them, and of course, the elites are only too happy to take more power and claim to save them.

The problem is that the more power the government has, the less freedom we individuals have. Worse, you are putting your faith in princes, instead of trusting in God. But God is your best bet.

Taking Off The Stupid Face Diaper At The Grocery Store

 At the Epoch Times today, there is an article claiming that COVID-19 A Pandemic of Fear 'Manufactured' by Authorities: Yale Epidemiologist by Isabel van Brugen and Jan Jekielek. The epidemiologist in question is Dr. Harvey Risch. Risch of course risks his career not to mention any grants he may otherwise get by speaking out. Is it any wonder that so few tell the public the truth?

In an appearance on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program, Risch, an epidemiology professor at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, argued that by and large, what has characterized the entire CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic has been a “degree of fear and people’s response to the fear.”

“Overall, I’d say that we’ve had a pandemic of fear. And fear has affected almost everybody, whereas the infection has affected relatively few,” said Risch.

“By and large, it’s been a very selected pandemic, and predictable. It was very distinguished between young versus old, healthy versus chronic disease people. So we quickly learned who was at risk for the pandemic and who wasn’t,” he added.

“However, the fear was manufactured for everybody. And that’s what’s characterized the whole pandemic is that degree of fear and people’s response to the fear.”

Please to read the article, and watch the embedded video. Various doctors are now speaking out, including Risch and Dr. Scott Atlas among others. Perhaps you might consider taking their words to heart and taking off the stupid face diaper at the grocery store?