With the recent success of the Hamas in Palestine, all Jews and Christians living in the region must be very worried indeed - as should we all. Christians once made up about 10% of the population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but now their share of the population is believed to have fallen to less than 2%. Many are leaving to escape the increasing Islamicization of society and the constant violence. Folks are very scared that Palestine is destined to become a second Iran.

Hassam El-Masalmeh, the leader of the Hamas contingent at the municipal council of Bethlehem, has already warned of an impending introduction of al-jeziya, a special tax which would be applied to all of the non-Muslim residents in the Palestinian territories. This tax revives the one applied through all of Islamic history to the dhimmi, the second-class Jewish and Christian citizens. This and other measures to humiliate and subdue non-Muslims are destined to be their lot.

Those who have read the Hamas Charter will know that these people intend to put into practice all that which is found in the Qur’an, and rule according to Shariah law. That can only mean more grief for those who are not Muslims.

Sometimes I wonder where our God is hiding in all of this great mess. Why is He allowing this to happen? Why isn’t He somehow putting a stop to all this violence and bloodshed, extreme irrational hatred and such force against all to whom He gave free will to choose for themselves? How does one believe in the words of the Psalmist where it is written “indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep” (verse 4) and “the LORD will keep you from all harm — he will watch over your life” (verse 7)? Doesn’t it all make rather a mockery of these words?

The hills in the photo background to the psalm are a part of New Zealand’s beautiful Southern Alps. The hills referred to by the Psalmist are those in the vicinity of Jerusalem, of which Mount Zion is one. As I understand it, the reference to Mount Zion is to the majesty and presence of God for it is on the holy hill of Zion where the ark of the covenant, the oracle, and the altars existed. To me the Southern Alps have that same quality about them - majestic and awesome, speaking of the presence of our majestic and awesome God. And the message is that we are to look to God for all our help when difficulties and dangers are greatest.

But what about the rest of David’s psalm - how am I to make sense of that in the light of what is happening in the Middle East? Well, this is how I understand it best.

Changing tack but still on the same course, remember what happened to Jesus after His baptism in the River Jordan by John the Baptist, and just before He began His ministry? We are told that he spent some time in the desert, fasting for 40 days and nights, and being tempted to use His divine powers in ways that were not the will of God. He was shown that He could have everything here on earth if only He turned from His Father, God.
When facing Pilate just before His crucifixion, Jesus said…

“My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
John 18:36

So what does all this have to do with the words of the Psalmist?

Now some may say that the following is a cop-out, but I don’t believe it to be so.

Being alive here and now, concerned for all I hear of what is happening in this world, horrified and fearful and sickened by the violent bloodshed, pain and grief that humans are able to inflict on each other, I am inclined to lower my eyes from those hills. I see what is in front of me, what is happening in this world, and I wonder where God is hiding. He doesn’t look to be there.
But the apparent foolishness to the worldly of those who are spiritual has me hearing what Jesus said that awful day to Pilate, and knowing which Kingdom that is His and where I, by the grace of God, believe I am heading will have me say that God does not depart from those who love Him. This current world is like a split second of time in all of eternity and the protection of our souls and our closeness to Him matters more than all else.

Oh boy, how can I say such a thing? Is God not in charge in this world too? Is He powerless to stop all this wanton carnage? Of course He is still in charge, and He remains omnipotent regardless. But He did give us free will and to go back on that part of the plan is clearly not consistent with His purposes. Well then, doesn’t it matter that our lives on this planet are battered and shattered and destroyed by the evil around us? Yes, of course it does! It matters a great deal. How could I feel as I do if it didn’t? But I honestly believe that something else matters far more. For a Christian, that is the Kingdom of which Jesus spoke before Pilate, the Kingdom of which He is King.

And for those who still believe that’s a cop-out, it needs to be remembered that those who love God are those who will demonstrate that through obedience to Him, and so be used in whatever way He asks of them. There is no sitting around moping and passing the buck - those bucks are usually passed right back to us. There is nothing here about passivity and denial of the reality of what is happening. We are to fight evil and replace it with His love, and that lovely Psalm of David reminds us to keep lifting our eyes to the hills and relying on the only One who can keep us wholly safe from the harm to our souls.

A new feature has just been added to Judah’s Journal. Thank you DKC.
There is now a form available by which you may email me a message should you wish to do so.
You can find it over there on the left-hand sidebar under “Pages”.
A response will be on it’s way as soon as all the interruptions give me half a chance!

More chipping away at the foundations of western civilization…

I thought that multiculturalism (together with its tyranny of political correctness) protected minorities from culture bashing. Certainly if you are part of a minority group you can expect the liberal left to stand up for you like a big brother and tell everyone to play nicely, that after all everyone’s beliefs are valid today and are all worthy of equal respect and supposed credibility.

So what is happening here to the beliefs of the Christian minority, those who sincerely believe in the Gospel message? Why are they being ravaged with contempt and mockery? Why doesn’t Christianity deserve the same respect given to Islam, for instance? What voice in the media dares to do with Muhammad as NBC has done with Jesus?

I am talking about a new TV show called “The Book of Daniel”.
Here, have a read of this:

The new show is called “The Book of Daniel,” which is first and foremost a tired carbon copy of the outrageously dysfunctional suburban family shtick, but with the twist that this time, the Fool is played by Our Lord. Episcopal minister Daniel Webster is hooked on Vicodin and sees Jesus Christ regularly. His wife is an alcoholic. His son is gay. His daughter sells marijuana. His adopted Chinese son is a teenage sex machine. His female bishop, who asks him for one of his “Canadian headache pills” for the codeine, and later raids his office for more, is having an adulterous relationship with his father, who’s also an Episcopal bishop, whose wife has Alzheimer’s and keeps talking about penises.

Are there enough ridiculous, plastic characters in this spectacle yet? No, apparently not. Daniel’s brother-in-law escapes town with the church treasury, but his wife and the church secretary have gone from a menage a trois to a saucy lesbian relationship. To find said brother-in-law, Daniel seeks out “Father Frank,” an Italian Catholic priest who (no stereotypes here?) uses his Mafia contacts to hunt down the missing money, so the mob can compromise Daniel.

Virtue Online

The creator of the show is one Jack Kenny. Apart from his departure from the Catholic Church where he felt unwelcome, one of the first facts reported about him is that he is gay, something that gives folk a chance to credit him with a preconceived stereotypical character, but that aside, the following is what he is reported to have said about himself.

“I’m a spiritual person,” he says. “I don’t know specifically what’s going on up there. I think there must be something going on, whether it’s an energy we’re all connected to or an old white man with a beard and a robe.
“I do believe in Jesus. I don’t necessarily know that all the myth surrounding him is true, but I read his teachings, and I think he was a great teacher and a wonderful philosopher. I think he had a great idea: `Love thy neighbor.’ There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Jack Kenny

To have such questions, I wonder how much attention he paid to his reading. If Jack Kenny thinks so highly of Jesus, then one surely has to ask why is he creating such a show? He might see nothing wrong in loving thy neighbour, but what about loving thy God? Is this how it is done?

A review by Joey Guerra includes the following comment:

To be sure, The Book of Daniel delves deep into heady, heavy topics within its fist two episodes. Themes of homosexuality, drug addiction and open marriages should have the AFA [American Family Association] spitting fire for many months to come. All that outrage should, in turn, translate into healthy ratings.

At its heart, however, The Book of Daniel is a compelling, unexpectedly comical, portrait of a family’s personal struggles with issues of faith, forgiveness and redemption. Daniel shows us that there are no easy answers in life, just constant questioning that moves us forward at a sometimes painful pace.

Joey Guerra

Those who object to this show are caught between a rock and a hard place. Why should they have their pearls trodden by swine, the graphic imagery used by Jesus to describe this sort of thing? And yet to protest plays right into the hands of the money grabbers who are making a profit by exploiting the attention of protestors. Even commenting here is giving the show attention, but it is hard to ignore when so much is contemptuous that needs exposing as such.

Now I have a question for Jack Kenny. Will he be brave enough to create a similar show about Islam? After all, surely multiculturalism demands a fair airing of all beliefs. Or might something roll off his shoulders before even the first act was filmed?

The last sentence in that quote is only half true. There may be no easy answers in life, but there most certainly are answers. They are found when one gets genuine about what Jesus is offering, gives up treating Him with contempt, and starts taking a good hard look at one’s life from His perspective instead.

Well peoples, I would like to draw everyone’s attention to the comments posted to the previous Journal entry. If those who wish would like to take a peek, that will save me from bringing any of them to the “front page” here.

After the serious stuff that has gone before, it is possibly time for a bit of light-hearted liplabour or my reputation will be getting one-sided… and also distorted since many of my online friends know me quite differently again, finding they need to watch where they put their legs or one will be found longer than the other.

Oh, Nooningscaup? Just an old word referring to the labourer’s resting time after dinner.

Playing with AltaVista’s Babel Fish automated translation service the other day reminded me of all the good laughs you can have playing with words. Babel Fish might know a lot of languages, but it takes a very technical approach that can provide for hilarious reading. If you need cheering up, try writing a little paragraph in the textarea box then choose a language into which you would like your paragraph translated. Don’t worry that the result means nothing to you - unless you already know that language - and then click again to have it translated into yet another language you don’t know. And now for the fun part. Ask Babel Fish to convert what it came up with back into English. Was that really what you said in the beginning? What on earth could you have been thinking?

As a kid we used to play a game with a storybook (Alice in Wonderland was always a good choice) and a box of little cards each with one noun written upon them. One person was the designated reader and would start reading, stopping each time when coming to a noun, and we would take it in turns to supply a substitute noun from the box. The reader would continue as though nothing was amiss, and often the more fluent the process, the more bizarre the story, and it would often become so funny that the “round” ended when we all rolled around on the floor cracked up with laughter. For some reason the vision of a Duchess sitting on a guinea pug and nursing a knitting needle once had me in stitches. I don’t know if kids ever play these games anymore, unless there is a digitalized version of it online somewhere around. No doubt Google knows where they are.

Cleaning out my computer files I came across a couple of attempts I once made at rewriting Wordsworth. Being rather a fan of his, I can’t think why I was rewriting him, but it was probably a bit of verbal doodling while waiting in between interruptions, my life being full of those and giving rise sometimes to a mindset of distractions.

Sorry Wordsworth
©Judah

I wandered lonely as a shroud
Looking for a ghost to wear
When all at once a shriek so loud
Sounded in my startled ear
My weakened knees and fluttering heart
Had me feeling none too smart

And then an echo echoed long
Followed by an eerie wail
That stretched into a hideous song
Of spooks and wraiths beyond the pale
My stomach heaved and I was sick
And ran away almighty quick

(er, try again…)

Sorry again, Wordsworth
©Judah

I wandered lonely as a shroud
Looking for a ghost to clothe
When suddenly an echo loud
Of shrieks and moans around behove
That I had stumbled on a wake
A party of the dead forsake

These night time wanderings I must stop
They do my wits not one bit good
If sleep would not escape to drop
My mind into this haunted wood
I might have more that’s sense to make
Some rhyming words of worth to spake

Oh Wordsworth I have let you down
This fan of yours in pensive mood
Is vacant when the words don’t crown
Inspiring thoughts in solitude
And all she hears are eerie cries
Of creatures that volatilize

(end)

Yes, well. I don’t think Wordsworth is easily improved upon.
But enough of this nonsense.
Would you prefer some more serious stuff next time? OK, I’ll see what I can do.

Judah’s Journal is part of my website, Judah’s Site.
Judah’s Site is hosted by a Christian website, visiblesoul.org, which has a number of features including a Christian Forum.
There is a clickable link to my parent website at the very bottom right of each page of my site including this Journal.

Since we have a pre-existing Forum for the discussion of Christian and related topics, I would like to make use of this feature when comments to any of my Journal posts appear to be developing into more of a discussion or debate than just comments alone.

This will be experimental at first since I have not combined use of the Forum with my Journal up until now. I think it is fun to try out new things and see how well they might work. Sometimes they are a total flop, in which case they can be abandoned. But I would like to try this idea to see what happens.

Since my previous post, being on a Christian topic, received a reasonably large number of comments and took on more the appearance of a discussion, I have transferred a copy of the main comments to a new topic thread within the Visiblesoul Christian Forums. A clickable link is provided in the last comment to that post.

Everyone is welcome to go take a look over there, and to post a response if you like. You may register there in order to post under your chosen internet name - see here for more information including how to do that.
The board is moderated. Posting privileges for Guests are dependant upon the continued goodwill and good behaviour of those who use this privilege. Again, this is experimental.

[Later edit: Posting privileges are no longer available for Guests due to an influx of spam. Registration is required just as it was to post comments to Judah's Journal.]

There is no “hidden agenda” in doing this other than simply making use of the existing Forum of my parent website, and strengthening the relationship between my site and the parent site.

Mark, I would especially like your comments since it was mainly your comments to my previous post that precipitated this move.
Well folks, what do ya think?

As you rightly say: “Dr Williams is a very bright fellow…”. But he is also VERY academic. Being TOO academic can sometimes be a disadvantage. (I use ‘academic’ here as opposed to ‘educated’.) People who are too academic in their approach often have a great deal of difficulty coming to a decision. The reason: They see things from all sides; as a result, they see everything in shades of grey, rather than in black and white. To be a good decision-maker, it helps to see things clearly, and not become paralysed by arguments from all sides. This is one reason why academics tend to make poor politicians and poor business leaders; for they simply cannot be decisive enough, quickly enough. I think that Dr Williams is such a person. He seems to be trying to please all, but he actually ends up pleasing nobody!

The Anglican Church is now in the business of syncretism and interfaith dialogue. It will be its downfall. Its leaders seem to have little idea why the pews keep on emptying. I can tell you why the pews keep on emptying: It’s because the Church itself is not evangelizing, and nor is it sure-footed. It keeps on changing the message because it is not convinced of the verity of the original one!

The fact is that there is one very BIG lesson to be learnt from Islam. And it is this: Don’t change the message, regardless of the times you live in! That’s the way the Muslims go about things; and, as if by magic, Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world today! Surprise! Surprise!

The Church, by contrast, is busy accommodating this one and that, busy changing its message to be more in keeping with modern times. And what’s the result? The Churches are emptying quicker than a football stadium in a bomb scare! When will these people learn?

If the times go against you, but you are sure that your message is correct, and you are sure that there is only ONE way to Salvation, then you should keep on keeping on, preaching the same old message. The Muslims are right: What was right before is right now too, and the same message will be right forever more!

The Church leaders are far too faint-hearted. And you know what they say about being faint-hearted, don’t you? Faint heart never won fair lady! ~ Mark Alexander

I agree with so much of what Mark has written that I wanted to bring his comment to my previous post forward to be part of this next post to follow.

There is an Aesop’s Fable about the man, the boy and the donkey and how they kept changing the various combinations and permutations of who rode/carried who, much to the derision of all onlookers in the end. I think that fits very well in this instance.

I believe that Truth is absolute, not relative. If you try to change it, then it is not the truth you are speaking - that truth does not change, but the speaker has simply moved away from it. Yes, the Muslims have at least got that right. You will never appease all, just as that fable illustrates so well. God doesn’t change His message, so when Dr Williams bends this way and that, he simply indicates that he has stopped following his Master.

There is a minority of Biblically faithful in the over all Anglican communion who are extremely concerned and distressed, but these folk are being pushed out as their witness is unwelcome in the “inclusive” revisionist rest-of-the-Church that now alienates them. I know some who have posted to Anglican forums of this ilk, and in courteously expressing their own views have challenged those of others. These folk have had their posts expunged and themselves banned from posting again - and this is the supposedly inclusive Church? Of course, the inclusive Church is just being politically correct, protecting members from perceived insult under the guise of relativism, that all views are considered equally valid and none should be contested by another.

I am hearing the revisionist majority in the Church say “It doesn’t really matter that you are living an expressly sinful life and need to clean up your act before becoming one of our leaders - God loves you, we are all sinners, and you can become a leader anyway.” I am left wondering if the Church has forgotten that Jesus said “Follow me” and that meant, not just wandering off in the same general direction, but actually emulating the Master in all things, actually following His commandments - all of them, including the one about immorality - and loving Him with all our being. Of course we are all sinners, and will constantly stumble and require His forgiveness and strength, but there are choices to be made and we are called to be holy, which in itself is a big part of loving our Master.

This interfaith thing… I am wondering if the Church actually thinks of this as a form of evangelism. Maybe this is a way to interpret the great commission, to go into the world and spread the gospel? This won’t be the whole of their evangelism, but is it part of it? And what gospel is being spread? It could be that we must love one another. But will that mean lots of “feel good” stuff, that we must love each other regardless of our differences, and accept everyone’s differences as being right for them and keep quiet if we chance to disagree? Will it be that we shall accommodate each other, and let each other know how much God loves us all. If the Church is so uncertain about what it believes now to be the Truth, then the gospel to be shared can hardly be anything other than that.

Evangelizing is not just going interfaith and telling everyone that God loves them. As followers we all share the great commission, to preach (demonstrate in our lives, share, encourage, exhort, teach, help and assist - all these things according to our gifts and talents) the Good News. And what exactly is that?

To start with, there is a little bit of groundwork that often needs to be done. It goes along the line that God, being our Creator, actually knows something about how we should best conduct ourselves. That means there are ways we are supposed to behave, and ways we are not supposed to behave. When it comes to interfaith, there are going to be some disagreements over that but it can still be accepted by most folks that whatever those rules are, as human beings we all keep breaking them anyway.
Humans everywhere are blighted with the ability to offend their own consciences.
God not only commands us to love one another, but here it is yet again… He also calls upon us to be holy. That is the part that tends to be ignored. We unholy lot fail miserably, which is partly why that bit is so unpopular, and by failing miserably we alienate ourselves from Him whose character is holy and righteous. Of course He is still around, and still there for us, but our relationship is seriously impaired by this one sad fact. The unsavoury part of the news is that this makes us headed for death, and death eternally. Then comes the central business of the Gospel… that God loves us enough to have given His only begotten Son to pay the price for all of us.
We must only turn around, sincerely ask his forgiveness and believe what He did.
I don’t know what exactly goes on in interfaith dialogues, but this Gospel is not usually a welcome topic on the agenda where folks prefer to stay clear of anyone with serious Christian beliefs. Does the Church have serious Christian beliefs? When such beliefs come with the “intolerant” John 14:6 message as well - that Jesus is actually the only way to God - then it would not be surprising that all the non-Christians may well want to change the subject to something quite a little lighter. So what is talked about instead… the weather?

I know I am viewing this as an outsider looking in, but that is how it appears to me. Looking in from the outside I am seeing a Church whose Liberal majority has stopped believing in absolute Truth, who has decided that God must be made to keep up with the times and allow His message to be revised since anything supernatural about Him is just too unbelievable to be taken seriously anymore. I see people who believe they are more rational than God, who have put Him in the dock and become His judge and jury, and who have decided their own rules are far more relevant to today’s quickly changing situations than anything God might once have said. And seeing people like that, I have to wonder just what the point is anyway with interfaith dialogue unless it is for support to abandon Christianity and set up as a New Age Church of Syncretism. I hear that Prince Charles, who as heir presumptive, has indicated that the monarch’s long-standing title of “Defender of the Faith” (Christian faith as per Church of England) will become “Defender of Faiths”, something totally and radically different but immanently suited to such a Church as it is becoming.

The faithful minority who consider themselves conservative, orthodox and mainstream Anglicans are wondering where they should go. Some are joining other churches elsewhere, including the Roman Catholic Church. Some are just leaving to sit outside and watch and wait. Some are lucky enough to belong to parishes with conservative vicars and bishops, and meanwhile feel safe enough to continue to worship and pray for the best. Some are raising their voices and trying to be heard above the din. And where am I in all this? I did once belong to the Anglican communion, but rather than return to so much strife, I am sticking it out on the “outside looking in” just for the meantime. Is the Church circling the drain? And if so, can Dr Williams find the plug in time? It doesn’t seem to me that he is looking in the right places to find it.

Samuel Huntington, a distinguished Harvard political scientist, predicted in his paper The Clash of Civilizations? published in the Journal of Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993, that there would be a future clash between worldviews of three major traditional civilizations - the Western world, the Islamic world, and the Confucian East. The dominating source of conflict would be cultural.

With the end of the Cold War, international politics moves out of its Western phase, and its centerpiece becomes the interaction between the West and non-Western civilizations and among non-Western civilizations. In the politics of civilizations, the peoples and governments of non-Western civilizations no longer remain the objects of history as targets of Western colonialism but join the West as movers and shapers of history.

This view has been contested with that of another, namely that the real clash is actually happening already within our civilization - intramural rather than extramural - between the adherents of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the advocates of diversified secular outlooks or worldviews.

Authors such as James Davison Hunter, Thomas Sowell, Robert P. George and James Kurth have been busy pointing out that the battle is now happening, an internal cultural conflict of significant measure and involving issues largely of morality.
Professor Hunter, a sociologist, believes that relativism — the idea that all faiths or belief systems are equally true, or have equal footing with each other — is currently battling fundamentalism for the minds of people all over the world.
Robert P. George, Princeton Professor of Jurisprudence, sets out in his book The Clash of Orthodoxies to argue that “Judaeo-Christian moral teaching can be shown to be rationally superior to orthodox secular moral beliefs.”
James Kurth, Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College, in “The Real Clash of Civilization” (Washington Times, 4 October 1994), argues that the clash is between two currently co-existing Western worldviews, that of Judeo-Christianity and that of postmodernism and multiculturalism.

I recently came across another adherent of this view, a well read and learned poster to the Anglican Mainstream forum, who had this to say concerning what is happening within Christendom in general and Anglicanism in particular.

I believe that the long-term threat lies not with Islam but with a pseudo-Christian counterfeit, which would have the capacity to deceive the elect if that were possible, (Matthew 24:24). Islam with its denial of Christ’s Sonship does not fall into that category. To me, it’s [Archbishop of Canterbury] Rowan Williams rather than Bin Laden who represents the wave of the future. That’s one reason why I’ve gone for him the way I have.

What militant forms of Islam will do is create the insecurity that will frighten people into the New World Order and into the false form of Christianity representing it. Militant Islam will also provide opportunities for Church leaders like Rowan Williams to pursue their interfaith, one-world agenda. Undeniably, Satan is being very cunning; by focussing attention on militant Islam he’s diverted Christians from the area where the real threat lies that is within the Church. We must remember that the devil can use both a blinkered conservatism and an inclusive liberalism to accomplish his purposes.

As evidence for this point just consider this forum? How many people would follow the teachings of Islam the answer is nil - but how many would be inclined to follow the lead of the present Archbishop particularly in times of great insecurity - the answer quite a lot.

I believe that both points of view happen to be true.

Liberal theologians have been busy at work for some time now, stripping the supernatural from Christianity and re-writing the faith. New writings, ever since Bishop John Robinson’s book “Honest to God” (1963), have removed the supernatural where it proved too much of an obstacle for the belief of rational humans of this postmodern age. The church is becoming increasingly Inclusive, seen as a good thing by many as it is said that God is Love and wouldn’t want anyone to be excluded. While that is true in one sense, it completely misses the point in another, and conveniently ignores that God is also holy and righteous and has set absolute moral standards based upon His character. Christianity is also being hijacked by New Agism, a syncretism of philosophies that include those from the east - just as Huntington predicted. The Church of England itself is poised to split asunder, liberals on one side and orthodox conservatives on the other, regarding issues of women’s ordination and that also of practising homosexuals. The secular worldviews of naturalism, postmodernism and multiculturalism are attacking and devouring our Judeo-Christian cultural heritage from within, substituting absolutism with moral relativism, situational ethics and pragmatism, and a utopianism which is based on the ill-fated and flawed notion that human nature is essentially good. Anyone who sticks their neck out and declares Biblical values is regarded as an intolerant judgemental rightwing religious bigot, the new definition of a Christian. The clash within our culture is occurring between classic Christian theism and postmodern naturalism.

But what about the other clashes predicted by Huntington?

I have already mentioned his concern of that with the Confucian east which I see invading in the form of the syncretic spirituality of New Agism and Universalism. Orthodox Christianity is currently under seige from this blend of east-west philosophies that have engulfed elements of Christianity and woven them into a heresy that mimics and proclaims itself to be the more enlightened evolution of Truth. It comes as a wolf in sheep’s clothing to steal from the Shepherd’s flock.

And the clash with Islam… we are already seeing this happen as well. For much more reading on this topic, my dedicated page listed on the left-hand side bar will provide a feast of authoritative literature, news and commentary. The invasion of Islam is encouraged and facilitated by the demise of Christianity in this new era. Moral relativism and multiculturalism allows it to co-exist without objection. Indeed, this postmodern worldview acts as a pre-requisite to co-existence, and so we are bound to continue courting this pervading malignancy. Islam is regarded as a neighbour and one which we are required to befriend. It finds little resistance but is welcomed with open arms by those who are already blinded to the Truth.

I fear that James Huntington will be proven right in the end.

I guess it is a good marketing ploy, but for me it doesn’t always work that way.
But these people still annoy me when they do it. I discovered it done to me again today.

Have you ever bought a book that, in big letters near the title, says “Volume No.1″ ?
That usually means that other titles will be coming out in due course. And the sneaky publisher next brings out Volume No.4 because the previous two volumes are still in the pipeline. As soon as you have bought Volume No.4, you are trapped! Sitting up there on the bookshelf together, the set is incomplete.
Now psychology works against you.

We are all wired up in such a way that there is an innate drive towards completion - to fill in the missing bits to make something into a whole, or in psychology, a gestalten.
The way our perception is configured, we all have a strong tendency towards seeking closure, continuation, proximity, similarity and common fate among elements in our experience.
An obvious demonstration of this tendency is in the difficulty of detecting a simple little spelling mistake in a paragraph of one’s own writing. It is always better to get someone else to check instead, or to use a spellchecker. And there is another interesting example where you find you can still read and understand a paragraph of text that is written with all the vowels removed. On the basis of this ability, we can abbreviate words when writing hurriedly and still understand the message at a later date.
Any given nanosecond, we take in great dollops of data and make sense of it by being able to group it into an identifiable context. Or we take in just enough of the data to make sense without uploading the whole of it. Without this ability, we would likely be dead from mental exhaustion before we had even learnt to walk!

So, where is all this heading?
Back to the bookshelf, and to Books No.1 and No.4 with your natural question about to follow: “Where are No.2 and No.3?”
Does that make you want to get those missing books as well? The fact that they are deemed missing is a give away. How happy are you with something that is incomplete? Well, that is all a matter of personality and vast individual differences, but the marketeers have certainly got psychology on their side when it comes to that.

I had a little conversation about these matters with my son some years ago. As a young child he was falling over himself to amass the entire collection of those awful Pokemon toys. We were visiting the USA at the time, in one of those huge toy barns full of these things, and I wanted him to count the number of variations of one item. Just then we became witnesses to a spectacular display of temper from a young member of another family in there. Dad had apparently limited the choice to only one item, but young kidlet knew that they came in a set of five and he wanted all five because just one was completely unbearable to him. My son and I stood back and watched. There was considerable drama until Dad got hold of himself, and then of his youngster, and marched the kidlet right out of the store. After that we had some interesting discussion on what constituted a set, who decided such things, and just how much they might benefit from doing so. My son’s collection kind of waned after that, and he became far more discerning with his little bit of pocket money.

Now I am definitely not going to invite you to look in the drawers of my sewing desk at all my acrylic quilting templates. If you do, you will have to understand that I actually wanted every one of those! Yes, even the ones I hardly ever use… or have never used at all (er, yet, that is).
After all, my collection would hardly be complete without them!

Changing the subject…
We were out for lunch today and I noticed everyone at adjacent tables - yes, absolutely everyone! - on being delivered their meals, picked up the salt and sprinkled it liberally all over their food. Good grief, they didn’t even taste it first!
How funny it would have been to have given them a dish already so highly seasoned that any more salt would have made it inedible.
No wonder restaurateurs place a big jug of water on each table. But what about all those poor kidneys? And how much escalating hypertension was dining out as well?

Just a thought.

What is it with some people? What comes next is certainly distasteful, so skip it if you like.

On a Christian forum out there in cyberspace, someone posts news of a Bible study group and gives a couple of links for those interested to follow. Of course there is no compulsion… just follow if you want.
Then a married man posts next and says how he must engage furiously in a certain sexual activity as he reads from these “pornographic” Bible study sites.
I’m not a moderator there so I just wander out and and wonder why it is that some types have to post this kind of thing. Why must they sully it for others? Why the need to desecrate? What is it with some people?

Do I hear excuses? “The devil made me do it!” Then a deriding laugh.
Well, some would say the devil was involved, but I don’t believe that exonerates anyone at all. We are each responsible for the choices that we make, and it is usually we who discover the consequences of them too. In fact, we eventually become the consequences ourselves.
It is there inside us, our imperfect natures that prevent us doing the good that we would do, and there is some more to add to that as well.

The saying “we are what we eat”… So true, and it goes even further than that.
We are what we take in more than just through our mouths, but through our eyes and ears and through our very skins as well.
Walt Whitman knew when he wrote his famous poem.

There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day
or a certain part of the day,
Or for many years or stretching cycles of years

Walt Whitman ~ There Was a Child Went Forth

In my professional career I have been exposed to all the seemy side of life. An empathic listener, I have heard a lot of pain and grief and seen a lot of hardship and depravity. People sometimes ask how I deal with it personally - don’t I take it home with me and have it bother me. Well, yes and no. I took it home in some ways, but unlike the ones who ask I also have the professional tools to deal with it. I saw hope and I knew of good outcomes. I did not have to live in it myself, and so I could live apart from it, protected by the knowledge that all things are subject to change and nothing has to stay as bad as it is right now.

This same optimism, the realistic kind that is born of knowing courage and achievement despite the odds, is somehow there inside me and despite the personal grief I have experienced in my own life, I still remain bouyant regardless. I remember as a teenager, standing by a hydrangea bush in the front garden, and experiencing an overwhelming conviction that, no matter what, everything would be right in the end. Where this came from, and what exactly it was about, I was at a loss to explain back then… but it was something I just knew. And I knew to look for the good, the best, the wholesome, that which is lovely, that which is full of beauty. It is these kinds of things, these sights and sounds, ideas and experiences, which provide immunity for all the worst in the world. These things are sustaining, and they will help make a person who they are.

Philippians 4:8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Just some very good advice for all of us living alongside the ugliness and plastic in this world.

I think it must be practically universal… that folks either shake their heads and say “I don’t make resolutions anymore; I only break them” or they make them and break them just days afterwards. Some possibly do make them and keep them, but it is often a very hard thing to do. We are creatures of habit, I guess.

We often know what we need to do - eat healthy, exercise more, not be so grumpy, be more generous, or whatever it is. But when it comes to actually doing it, well, you know what I mean… human nature, I guess. Other things get in the way. There’s all kind of reasons… er, excuses. Just knowledge alone does not prove to be enough.

Recently I was conversing with a New Ager on a forum, and with one other we were trying to debunk for him the myth he had swallowed “hook, line and sinker” that he was divine, that he himself was God.
New Agism is rife these days, and it is very tricky stuff. It appeals to one’s vanity and it makes use of self-centredness and pride, quirks of human nature shared by all. When someone believes he is divine, then he knows he is far more enlightened than those of us who simply don’t see it yet. There is a massive arrogance that prevents these folks from recognizing a fundamental truth of human nature… not that we are God, but that we are flawed creatures of His creation. It was pointed out to this particular New Ager by a third person how his conversation was full of sarcasm and disdain. He refused to answer genuine questions, as though they mattered nothing, but instead made unfounded judgements upon us personally, and eventually left abruptly with an unwarranted and most unloving condemnation. He was God, he said, and that was that - we would find out he was right in the end. His huge pride had blinded him to the truth of human nature, his very own imperfect nature.

New Agism teaches that we have forgotten who we are, that we are really divine, and that there is no real evil - just ignorance. It teaches that as soon as we realize that we are divine, sharing the God spirit of all things in our universe, and we become aware of this unity with all existence, then we will begin to treat each other with kindness and charity. Knowledge of our divinity brings about our redemption, and redemption is dissolution into the universal spirit of God that pervades all things. This is pantheism, no less.

However, the credibility test of a worldview is that it must stack up with reality.

If it is just knowledge that empowers us to do the right thing, then why is it that all those New Year resolutions are so jolly hard to keep? We know we should eat healthy and not be so grumpy, but something still breaks down in the process and the outcome is not quite as simple as that. The enlightenment of New Agism which would have us all believe we are so much one with God that we are God, have us believe ourselves to be divine, does not quite stack up with reality.

The Apostle Paul had a tussle with exactly the same thing. This is what he had to say about it:

Romans 7: 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.

Paul was firmly convinced that our natures are not basically divine. Indeed, our natures are flawed; they are full of bad habits and various shortcomings. In fact, most of us if honest know that we are far from perfect. Worldviews that teach to the contrary have all failed, many having resulted in tyranny and destruction. Marxism and Neo-Marxism are recent examples.
I rather like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies as a novel that explores the depths of human nature and what happens when the normal sanctions of society are disrupted.

To my way of thinking, we cannot be both divine and flawed at the same time, not unless our God is both good and evil which is, as I see it, an implausible contradiction. The New Ager, those who use Christian terminology and literary images, is not truthfully referring to the Christian God who is righteous and holy and in whom there is no sin. He may believe that this is the same God to whom he is referring, but there are grave errors, irrationalities and oversights in his representation. He has overshot the boundaries of orthodox theology and constructed a god in his own image - he is his own deity, having succumbed to the primal temptation to put himself on the throne and worship himself.

Right, time to get started on those New Year goals that I made for myself. I know I will fail at them many times over, but I’m sure somebody said somewhere that God loves a trier.