If you say that you have faith, but don’t give to others, you are a liar.
Giving is the greatest act of faith. It shows confidence in God’s ability to take care of you, despite your charity.
#faith #charity #giving
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Category: Uncategorized
I had a thought last night about politics and religion and the difference between them. I have always thought of politics as a kind of secular religion. People become committed and passionate adherents of one political doctrine or another. They will even make war and commit violence to attain political means.
But even more than that, partisan politics makes you narrow minded in a different way.
In politics, people focus on the evil in particular groups.
In religion, people focus on evil itself.
The truth is that politics gives you one blind eye.
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A Word for Today.
Christians and all good people must remember that our fight isn’t against marxism, or racism, or any ism, but against powers, evil and spiritual forces. This is where many have allowed themselves to become confused.
I am just as guilty as anyone. I rail against socialism. I rail against the counterfeit morals of the world such as racism. But we should probably dig beneath the surface, to explore why people are turning to these ideologies.
I think it is because people no longer believe in the power of love, but instead believe in authority, and control. Perhaps because they cannot control themselves, they believe that everybody must be controlled fully, by government, by the state, by the sword, if necessary.
Our christian concepts have not gone away. The truth is that people still feel a deep desire for these moral ideas. All you have to do is listen to the godless, the political maniacs, the atheists and socialists. It is obvious that they do indeed believe in evil, but they just call it by another name.
For example, racism has become the new evil. We are told it is everywhere, systemic, invisible, in everyone, and we are to repent of it.
Every christian and good person can unite under the flag of a war against evil, against sin, against hatred. But when we use the world’s moral language, confusion and chaos is the result. The proof is all around us today.
The real problem with these new concepts is that they do not have a strong claim to accuracy.
For example, any moral fault that an accuser is free from is not a valid religious moral concept. Jesus said as much. We are all guilty of murder, of adultery, of hatred, he said. When a sin (racism) can only be owned by a certain race, it is not valid.
We have to be careful as believers not to promote an alternative moral dynamic to the one laid out over 2,000 years ago, not one based on humility, not one that can be solved by love, as it only exists in the mouths of accusers as a secret, dubious deposit of intent on the souls of others.
The world has abandoned evidence, reason, logic, and all good sense, it seems. They apply their slurs on their opponents without discrimination.
We need to ask ourselves why. What do they see?
They see exactly what you and I see.
They see evil, everywhere, in everyone.
But they have lost hope in love, succumbed to defeatism and nihilism, and now support fully the authority of the state to impose order on everyone.
They have lost faith, is all.
I had a kind of epiphany the other night about truth and the seeking of it.
I have always felt that most believers I have known are extremely curious people, and have often considered them to be seekers of truth.
Now, an atheist hears this and maybe scorns at the idea. They think of themselves at pure rationalists, following logic and reason to their inevitable conclusions. I believe, for most of them, this is a self-deception.
I say this because you often find, especially concerning social and political issues, atheists allow emotion to override their sense of logic and reason. You often find that they believe that if a man claims that he is biologically a woman, then he just is. The traditional husband/wife/child nuclear family structure can be replaced with alternative models, and nothing of value is lost. And there many more examples such as this.
What is happening is that truth is being discarded for a false sense of self-righteousness.
I find that the majority of atheists do not believe in truth at all. They believe in good feelings, and acceptance to the point of being enablers of suffering.
Christians believe that only the truth can set someone free. It seems to me, on the other hand, that many agnostics and atheists believe that truth, in regards to social issues, such as those just proffered, should take a back seat to niceness.
The problem is, it is not nice to enable someone in their own self-destructive behavior. It is reprehensible, pernicious and evil.
Another example is the absurdity, in the atheist worldview, in being politically or socially active, at all. In a godless universe, where we are just assemblages of meaningless matter, where all morals are subjective, or a matter of cultural preference, the idea that a person should be socially or morally inclined to the point of emotionalism is absurd. In such a world, more of a selfish and self-serving moral philosophy makes sense– that is, if you determine that life is worth living out, at all.
But on Twitter and in message forums all over the internet, on any given day, you find atheists using the strongest of moral language in indignation and judgment toward those that think or believe or vote differently from them. They call their interlocutors reprehensible, racists, and even go as far as to use the word evil.
This is a great mystery and betrays an inconsistency in their reasoning processes. It is not truth that blindly follow, but their souls, in the end.
All of that said, after midnight, a couple of nights ago, I had an epiphany that put all of this together. I made two Tweets at the time to express my realization.
“Most live in a world of bad guys and good guys. Christians live in a world with all bad guys. The only natural thing left for us do is to seek truth, as we already know we won’t ever make a heaven here on earth.”
This is an important point. I’m not trying to fix the world. It is man’s heart or soul that needs fixing. I’ll leave the endless cycle of legislating morality through government to those who don’t know better. The cycle of suffering isn’t going anywhere. Governments will grow in scope and power, the people will be oppressed by the swelling power of the government, The people will either revolt or capitulate. Nothing is gained. No moral progress has been had. The world becomes no better, but more confusing to our befuddled social scientists and humanities engineers.
Believers are not sidetracked by all of this moral wrangling. We are left to seek out truth. It is all we have left to accomplish.
The other tweet:
“Being a truthseeker is what ultimately leads people to God. You can only find God by sorting through the chaos of the moral singularity inside man. But you can only find yourself there by seeking truth.“
And that is closer to the point. Unless you confront the greatest mysteries and tackle them head on, you cannot make a claim to truth. You cannot claim to be a seeker of truth. We who believe have already looked into the noisy turbulence of the cosmic eye, and found truth in it. And because the truth sets a person free, we are free of the moral and political confusion that often finds a home inside the godless man.
I was thinking last night about how to deal with a distant daughter or son. I have two daughters myself, and sometimes children will go through phases. They may become distant, even manipulative, or seemingly aloof or disinterested in almost any kind of interaction with their parents.
I was thinking about the frustration a parent feels in this case, and actually know it well. You feel hurt. You would die for this child, give your life for her or him if it came down to it.
But she has her face buried in a phone all day. She ignores instructions, requests, even greetings. Maybe she has a hundred excuses for why she cannot talk right now or do some simple task.
Maybe the parent will become so frustrated that they begin to feel their heart hardening against the child. The parent feels dishonored, disrespected, and plainly dissed.
I feel like God spoke plainly to me about this subject, and it was a simple and short message.
We have to remember that we too have a heavenly Father. We have, at times, disrespected Him. We have ignored Him for weeks on end, even years, sometimes decades. We too have had our head buried in child-raising or a career or a relationship or a pet sin. We have at times been rebellious, cold, undeserving of his love and the great gift of existence that he has given to us.
We are hypocrites if we complain about our children’s inattention.
Once we realize that we too have been distant children, we also realize that the answer to the problem we are facing is grace, mercy, and unconditional love and patience. We must be patient with them. We must wait for them. We must constantly let them know that we are always there for them. We must be ready to receive their love and attention back at any time.
Of course it is our instinct to grow cold against those who are hurting us. We must never allow that to happen. We must always remember the unlimited grace and mercy our Father God had in dealing with us, and model our behavior after Him.