I know exactly how Democrats feel right now.  I watched the immoral Bill Clinton get elected.  Then I watched all his salacious behavior in office, under the actual Oval Office desk.  Then I watched him lie about it and question the meaning of the word ‘is’.  Then I watched the media faun over how he got away with lying.  I watched his political machine including James Carville treat all the women he had abused as if they were garbage.  Then I watched homosexuality become acceptable.  Then I watched oral sex be redefined as a completely acceptable thing to do to interns under your desk.

House Vote on Clinton Impeachment.

Then I watched the impeachment proceedings hoping he would be removed from office.  Of course there was still the Algore problem and isn’t it too bad that we changed the original Constitutional proportional representation to a winner-take-all system? But nothing really happened, he was disbarred, and he continued abusing women with his pals Jeffery Epstein and Harvey Weinstein and his slobbering political hack wife stood by him clinging to the scraps of hope that she would one day rule the world.  Then even though the world supposedly loved Clinton, 9/11 happened, the tech bubble popped, Enron happened, the housing crisis happened. The dream of the Clintons, became reality, a harsh one.

It is 21 years later, the evil Clintons have still not been put in their place, but there is another impeachment.  I followed the original line for a bit, lamenting that someone so immoral was elected.  But then there were no interns under the desk.  There was no dress.  The office is more respected than it was by the previous President. Religious freedoms were expanded, regulations were cut, excellent judges were appointed. Real evils like backpage.com were shut down.  Little tyrants across the globe are being brought to heel.  The insane liberal narrative is pushed back every day on Twitter.  Nothing immoral happened.  In fact many Democrats who had been living immorally for decades were called out by the overreaction to Trump, #metoo.

I know how you feel, but your feelings are unfounded.  While trying to act all pure as the wind driven snow, Democrats touted a sleazy lawyer and his porn star client, as a possible Presidential candidate. The only salacious details that did come out are in a document dreamed up by Christopher Steel which was used illegally by the previous administration to spy on Trump and create a phony Russia Collusion narrative. Democrats now celebrate the murder of their unborn children, in the streets, with signs, finally coming out of the back alley.  Impeachment is based on little more than the President asking Ukraine to restart an investigation they stopped at the behest of Biden.  Even as new and better trade deals are formed.  Though time will tell how these and his other actions fare, it is looking good so far.  And corruption at many levels of government is being rooted out.  Any of the evils which continue to expand like, accept gays as normal, or else.  Making crossdressing and child mutilation normal.  Hardly have anything to do with Trump.  This is certainly no Clinton presidency.

Like most sequels this isn’t as good as the original.  But it seems more good is being done.  Heaven is shining down upon us.

What exactly is worship?  Like many concepts or words, worship has become too familiar.  A watchful dragon as C. S. Lewis would put it.  We cozy up to it because it is ours, forgetting it is a slimy serpent.  Such dragons require the magic of elf land to free us from our delusion.

Thinking about some other contexts will free us from our dragons.  What does it mean to worship a king?  Of course a king wants praise, anyone does.  There is some new use of the word thirsty among the post Christians that means desiring online comments.  But this is only fun for a while.  Only the simple are content with mere praise.  And what is the praise for?  Most leaders want to earn their praise and be praise by those qualified to praise.  If someone praises your work, who knows nothing about your field, it doesn’t mean much.  And if you don’t have any work to praise it means even less, unless you are a Kardashian.  Perhaps there is some divergence between the sexes on this one.  Men like to accomplish and build things, women like to build relationships.  Relationships for relationships sake, is a house of cards or compliments as the case might be.  And so perhaps this feminine propensity has affected our view of praise in and around worship.  But there are very few kings who are known merely for being kings.  Well maybe if you count the Marxists, but in the pre modern world that wasn’t enough.  There have been many great leaders in history who were asses, yet we must revere them because they got things done.  This is true from Steve Jobs to Alexander the Great.

Saint Hedwig and the New Convent. Silesia, Poland. c. 1353.
“At the top of the page an inscription describes one of Saint Hedwig’s charitable acts: “Here she convinces her husband to have a monastery for Cistercian nuns built at Trebnitz with his own money.” Hedwig stands with her husband, supervising the construction of the building. Her emphatic gesture suggests that, although Henry supplied the funds, she was the guiding force of the project. Henry wears full ducal regalia, with numerous heraldic devices, while Hedwig is modestly dressed. On the right, laborers construct the Gothic building, using scaffolding and a pulley system. “

The first part of getting things, big things, done is getting other people to do what you want.  One man might throw words about on a blog but it takes many men to accomplish great things.  The pyramids on the plain of Giza are a testament to organization and leadership.  The great Pharaohs didn’t want praise they wanted every man to put those massive stones in the correct order, according to his plan.  He didn’t want sycophantic managers repeating ridiculous choruses over and over, he wanted them to get every last worker to work, to meet his goals.  And he heard the prase of every generation until now. But then a neighboring kingdom decides to attack.  He doesn’t just want people standing around telling him he is a good commander.  He wants to win the war.   He wants his generals to execute his battle plan.  And his generals want the same of those under them all the way down the line to the lowly foot soldier putting his foot in the right spot.  Refraining from badmouthing your superior is important but praise without works is dead as St. James might say(James 2:14).

There is little difference in these matters between a tyrant and a good leader.  Both want their commands followed.  The difference is in the goals or intentions.  Some men want only to make a name for themselves like Obama.  Other men like Churchill want to make all England great again.  But both must be obeyed.  One uses his talents for his own glory the other for the glory of all, which ultimately gets him more glory.  And so there is a slight distinction in the nature of the commands.  Tyrants issue arbitrary commands, which make no logical sense, in order to prove that they are obeyed.  If the command made sense the peon might just be doing what makes sense on his own.  If the command makes no sense you can be sure that he is doing it just because the tyrant commanded it. You see this in gangster movies.  Hold your hand over the flame—because I said so.  Shoot your friend—because I said so. Prove your loyalty.  Biblical leaders should never be tyrants but they should still be followed.  That’s how hierarchy works,  someone must lead.

For the Church, that someone is Jesus the Christ.  You would think this was simple.  But we Americans don’t like kings and we have been pretending for a long time that pastors are not leaders, that they are just hanging out and sharing.  We also pretend Jesus is not a King.  Which is why things have gotten so bad in our culture.  We have lots of praise floating around but nothing gets built.  Then we invent orthopraxies to suggest that buildings don’t matter, even though every person on the earth, ever, knows that they do.  Christ wants us to take dominion.  We are children of the king, we should be acting out his will, not just singing repetitive, simple, stupid praise choruses over and over until we feel good.  This doesn’t make Jesus feel good, it’s clear, as the King of Kings he isn’t interested in our stupid songs.  He wants his whole Kingdom to flourish, to defeat it’s enemies, to make the whole world one under his rule.  He wants us to build Christian things and write Christian books and compose Christian symphonies.  Where is the proof that you follow Jesus?  Is it just in your heart?  What good is that? Who cares how you feel?

I thought of another example, which has almost become so ridiculous as not even to work.  The feminists have ruined our concept of marriage, but I will try nonetheless.  What sort of marriage would it be where the woman said to her husband, “I like the way you make me feel on Sunday morning in the bedroom, but I don’t really want to have anything to do with you the rest of the week.”?  Sadly this is almost the case, in marriage and in the Church.  But the Bible, the New Testament even, says that Sarah was blessed when she called her husband Lord(I Peter 3:6).  And repeatedly the husband is said to be the head of the wife.  Surely even we can understand how shallow it is to only like your husband for sex, when he is making you feel good?  Surely we must see that wanting to execute his idea of a house for you and the kids is a good thing? And any decent husband only seeks to organize his house for the good of everyone in it.  Do you really think praising him for being a good husband and then not doing anything he says makes any sense?  Don’t you see this is a sure formula for sending him into depression?  To be praised for the work of your hands when it all disintegrates is not healthy.  Then why do we do the same thing to Jesus?  We repeat over and over “I have come to worship” and God is thinking, “Ok, good, so do it. Stop telling me you are going to do it and do it already!”  Stop telling him he is a good husband and instead trust what he says.  He is looking out for you, he loves you, so truly worship him by believing that. Do what he says.  Make his words reality and then he will have something worthy of praise. Other men will praise him in the gates as the Proverbs 31 woman accomplishes for her husband.  So we should see Christ praised in all the world, for our works of redemption.

We might need special revelation some day, when we have executed everything that the Bible already commands us. Like that rich young ruler saying “these have I kept from my youth, what should I do now?(Mat. 19:20)” it’s mostly ridiculous.  We don’t need something more.  Chesterton said that Christianity had not been tried and found wanting but found difficult and left untried.  So why don’t we make a change and stop talking about worship as mere words flung about in a warehouse thinly veiled to look like a church?  Worship is action.  The true Christian is a militant Christian.  Faith without works is dead.  Faith with works is true religion, true worship.  Do you love me?  Feed my lambs(John 21:17).  Do what I told you to do. He who loves me is he who does the will of my father(Mat. 12:50).  So stop allowing music to make you feel good on Sunday, and start feeling bad about what you don’t do the rest of the week.  This is true worship.

 “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.  Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily.”   -St. Matthew

It’s easy to understand how many details of the New Testament are ignored or forgotten but this is right at the beginning and part of the Christmas story.  Joseph was a just man, he wanted, wanted a new wife which he had a right to before God, but he didn’t want to make a big deal out of it and give Mary unnecessary bad press.  He prized virginity.  That doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore.  Recently it was made public that some music ‘artist’ made his daughter get regular virginity test.  He was mocked everywhere, and I don’t recall even hearing a response from the church.  We don’t value virginity as God would have us do.

The Appearance of the Angel to St. Joseph. Georges de la Tour. c. 1652. oil on canvas.

Joseph was just, also translated righteous and contrasted with evil and sinner.  From Webster’s 1828 Dictionary: “In a moral sense, upright; honest; having principles of rectitude; or conforming exactly to the laws, and to principles of rectitude in social conduct; equitable in the distribution of justice; as a just judge.”  There are some good connotations concerning justice in our culture.  ‘Social justice’ is seen as the highest good, though very few could define it.  But being a judge is almost the worst thing imaginable to us.  These ideas are almost always connected in scripture.  Wisdom is connected to judging rightly which is connected to moral character which is connected to faith in God.  The just man rules his home well Prov. 20:7.  Later in Matthew Jesus is referred to as a “just man”, during his phony trial before Pilate.

But there is something else in that definition “conforming exactly to the laws”.  Joseph conformed to the Law, the Old Testament Law and was praised for it. He was a true Jew, faithful to the Law of Moses and looking for the Messiah.  He was in the middle of acting wisely when and angel came to guide his steps and to ask more of him.  And Joseph trusted God further by obeying.   He didn’t sleep with Mary until after Jesus was born and he named his son ‘Jesus’.

Conforming to the Law, especially OT law is not real popular these days even in the church.  Obedience is branded as some sort of legalism and we replace it with warm fuzzy feelings we call love.  But God’s law has a lot to say about virginity, and in order to be wise judges and just like Joseph, we must study it.  The Hebrew word for virgin is often translated maid because the concepts were interchangeable.  To be young and unmarried was to be a virgin.  It is difficult to say whether this is a chicken or an egg.  Most cultures seem to prize virginity, but this Biblical respect could be driven by laws lain down by God through Moses.

Levitical priests were not allowed to marry anyone who was not a virgin Leviticus 21:7.  This didn’t apply to everyone but seems to indicate that there is a special purity about virgins duh, which God required for those who arbitrate between God and his people.  Now the main passage, Deuteronomy 22.  In this section a situation is proposed: a man dislikes his wife after their wedding nigh.  So he chooses to accuse her of not being a virgin.  Note this is the exact opposite of what Joseph does.  Then a trial must take place.  This is public business, this affects the entire community.  Evidence for the trial is to include proof of her virginity.  Which is the bloody bed sheet from the wedding night.  If this is produced, the man is a liar and he is beaten, he is to pay double the bride price to the father of the woman for trying to give them all a bad name, and he can never divorce her.  But if there is no evidence and it is found to be true that she was not a virgin, she is to be stoned, because she dishonored her father by whoring. This is starting to sound a lot like our modern rapper.  A girls virginity is a precious thing to be guarded by her parents.  Modern commentators like to explain this section away in all sorts of ways, because modern science teaches us that not all women bleed the first time they have sex. I am just wondering how many 14th Century B.C. Jewish women ‘science’ observed to come to this conclusion.  If you start with the basis that this is the Law of God as most Christians have, it’s not hard to find a way to make sense of things, and be blessed for it.  If you want to find something for your feminism to attack, it’s not difficult, but it is wrong. And it will result in causing harm.  This way of looking at the world, and deciding what is good or evil protects virginity, women, marriage, the resulting children and the entire community.  Men can’t just find some random defect, throw out a few accusations and then walk away.  The only reason for divorce is unfaithfulness.  There is some Jewish tradition that women were inspected by the grooms family for defects or disease prior to marriage.  This protected him, because when the day comes he can no longer work in the field, he would depend on his children.  Children were a blessing, from God but making a wise choice was also important.

Further verses in Deuteronomy 22 make some other situations clear.  Basically you go from virgin to wife or from virgin to whore, who is stoned.  Those are the only options, this is serious.  If a woman is attached either by promise or actual marriage defiling her results in death.  With this added protection for women: it is assumed if she was in the country, that she screamed for help, so she can live.  If she is unattached, the man who slept with her, must marry her and can never divorce her.  He also has to pay the bride price.  Virgins were valuable, they cost 50 shekels which is probably a year’s wages. It also makes you wonder why wasn’t she betrothed?  Did she have a defect? Did it make her think she might as well have some fun because she couldn’t marry?  Thinking through these things, God really makes end runs around our evil finagling.  And our legal developments should do the same, with Biblical basis.

Can we really say that our current system is better?  Newer always means better to most moderns, but actual science is pretty clear, children raised in traditional homes with one father and one mother, who stay married, do better in almost every category. Family innovation is family destruction, which is cultural destruction.  We currently have the highest  rate of children living in single parent homes of any country.  We also have the highest prison population of any country ever.  And most of those inmates didn’t grow up with both parents.  Today the term ‘baggage’ is a thing most women have.  While there is virtue in being a Boaz, it’s all most men can do to husband the wife of their youth.  It is a completely other and almost impossible thing to husband the amalgam of wives created by the various men who move through the life of the average American woman by the time she finally gets married at age 28 or 40.  Fathers now hand over brides with tire tracks all over their white dresses. Like those surrogate children born with DNA from three parents, it’s a mess.  We stand here in the bottom of a pit we dug daring to criticize the Word of God.  Who do we think we are?  Oh right god.

Joseph wanted to marry a virgin, God wanted the mother of Jesus to give birth as a virgin.  And God found a way to accomplish this and give Joseph something better than he ever dreamed.  Jesus opened the womb, Joseph became the father of the eternal king, who would save us all.

To celebrate ‘impeachment’ the top three lies about Trump:

#3 Trump Told the Russians to Interfere in our Elections:

A press conference in front of the whole world, during his campaign, July 28, 2016, is collusion?  LOL!

So keeping emails on a private server breaking security rules is fine, because they were about ‘wedding planning’, but if Russia get’s those emails it’s a major security breach?  LOL! Erasing emails during an investigation, is also fine, because, Democrat.

How could they get emails that were already erased?  The fact is they already had them, China too, which is why Hillary shouldn’t have done this in the first place.  Also it was a joke.

Not an error, this is the purfect picture for this farce.

Getting erased emails is ‘interfering in our election’.  How is this possible if she has nothing to hide and these emails were about family matters?  LOL!

This was possibly the most publicized news story of all time, yet the people went out by the millions and elected him President.  The people have spoken.

In addition extensive investigations have proven that there is no connection between Trump and Russia. See Ball of Collusion by Andrew McCarthy.

The later story was created by the Hillary campaign to excuse their loss.  This is well documented. I was unable to find the whole press conference, this is the best I could do.

Further Reading:

https://nypost.com/2015/08/18/hillarys-email-server-was-run-out-of-an-old-bathroom-closet/ 

https://theduran.com/new-insider-book-reveals-hillary-clinton-made-up-russia-story-to-cover-up-lazy-pathetic-election-loss/

https://spectator.org/mueller-an-unmitigated-disaster/

#2 Trump is a Racist

On the 12th of August 2017 a group called “Unite the Right” organized by reformed Occupy-Wall-Street-Obama-Organizer, Jason Kessler, began filling a park for a planned a rally in Charlottesville to protest the removal of a statue of Rober E. Lee.  Lee was a Civil War hero, recognized by everyone on both sides of the War as the most honorable man on the planet.  As such statues of him have graced parks across this country for 150 years.  Kessler followed the proper procedures in planning his rally.  The so called ‘antifa’ showed up and caused a bunch of violence.  Liberals excuse this violence because anything is justified in attacking people who want to keep statues and history.  Actually speaking well of a white person is now a crime, because you are a ‘white nationalist’ or a ’white supremacist’.  These terms mean almost nothing in these stories.  At around 11:40 the rally was declared illegal, police told everyone to go home.  Violence erupted.  Around 1:45pm James Fields drove his car into the crowd of Atifa et. al.. Later around 4:40pm a helicopter crashed killing two officers.

When Trump first addressed the violence he said “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”  Liberals say this makes him a racist.

Changing the name of the park and removing a statue is an attack on everyone who lived during the Civil War and since until yesterday, when this became an issue.  Planning a rally to protest this attack does not make you a racist.

Antifa has shown this behavior many other time in many other places.  They wear masks they, shut down free speech, they are the real fascists. The violence they kicked off by showing up made this a win for them. Saving Robery E. Lee statues now makes you a racist.

Trump’s statement that there were bad people on both sides is clearly true.  At the very least Antifa beat people up and that nut in a car drove over people. This does not make Trump a racist.

Most accurate timeline I could find, includes many original sources: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2017/08/16/timeline-leading-to-declaration-of-unlawful-assembly-at-emancipation-park-rally-in-charlottesville-virginia-on-august-12/

#1 Trump Put Kids in Cages

This story began on the campaign trail when Trump suggested that countries should have borders.  What a novel concept.  It proceeded to include every bad thing that ever happened on the border, including Obama era policies like detaining kids that come across illegally with their parents.

Somehow separating kids from their criminal parents, which has happened to every criminal from the beginning of time, is suddenly an issue.

Where are you supposed to put them?  Are you going to let them just wander back home through the mine field of sex traffickers, drug traffickers, and human trafficking coyotes?

Why don’t we blame the Obama era policies which advertised an open America, as well as a number of ‘sanctuary cities’ openly encouraging illegal, dangerous trips across the border.

Illegal aliens and the traffickers who exploit them, have long exploited the anchor baby misunderstanding of our Constitution. Obama made this worse by encouraging ‘dreamers’.  Minors were automatically given citizenship.  And later their parents and whole ‘families’ could be shoehorned in as well.  So essentially all you had to do was steal a kid and you can get in.  Maybe we stop encouraging this?

Even the liberal Snopes admits this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-build-cages-immigrants/

Further Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DREAM_Act

https://youtu.be/lwlOVr-w4eU?si=5aG1KpiD8UsTIt0I

https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-migrant-children-policy-under-trump-obama-2018-6

In conclusion, it’s disturbing how skewed search results are on these issues.  If I didn’t already know the truth I would never have found it.  Original sources are all but buried.  Also, when blatantly false narratives are established, the sources which come up in search results never make an attempt to correct the lies they spread.  Each one of these lies has spun off into dozes of other lies in a house of cards on a house of cards on a house of cards.  CNN and the New York Times are a joke.  Google is a joke.  Read old books.

I am disturbed by the Christian tenor towards politics and the more important spheres of life if there are any allowed these days. Words have become difficult because there are so many labels hurled as pejoratives and so little meaning behind them. Some of the terms swirling about this idea I am attempting to get to are ‘theocracy’, ‘pluralism’ and the phrase ‘religious freedom’. I have seen very little evidence that anyone knows what these words meant or mean. And I am almost certain that no one thinks of these things as they should by any standard of Biblical or Orthodox authority.

What is a Jew? Do we want Jews around? What is a Muslim? Do we want Muslims around? Why do Christians talk about three great faiths? Why do we talk about Christ as King and then mock all monarchies? Why do we sing “our God reigns” and then use the term ‘theocracy’ as a pejorative? Why do we call ourselves evangelicals, people dedicated to spreading the ‘good news’ to the whole world, and then speak highly of pluralism? None of this makes any sense to me.

Janusz Antosz. Contemporary.

There is an ancient tendency to begin the story of a religion or a family at the beginning. And this makes perfect sense, if your god wasn’t there in the beginning, where was he? Was he sleeping for 2000 years? 4000? Was he made by another god? Then isn’t that other god the one we should worship? You see this with Peter’s first sermon at Pentecost. He is rightly connecting Christ to the history known well by all Old Testament Jews, all the way back to the beginning in Genesis. You see this also with the genealogies in the New Testament. Jesus isn’t new isolated incident. He is connected to the Jews and their God is connected all the way back to the beginning. He is the creator. But after Jesus you have two religions, Christians and Jews. The Apostle Paul went from attacking the Christians with physical violence to attacking the Jews with the truth. Not some new truth, the truth of the Old Testament. He praised theBereans for going back to the Old Testament and realizing that Paul was correct, Jesus was the fulfillment of the Old Testament. Jesus didn’t invent something new, he removed the blindness of the Jews. We see the picture so well in the conversion of Paul. Paul wanted the Jews to take their proper place as priests to the rest of the world not as political overlords to the rest of the world. Faithful Old Testament Jews became Christians. They followed Jesus’ reading of the Old Testament and not that of the Jews, the Pharisees and Sadducees. And this division continues down to this day.

So what is a Jew today? It is someone who read their Old Testament the wrong way. It is someone who missed the whole point of their Old Testament and rejected it’s prophesied Messiah Jesus. Is it any wonder that this group was in conflict with the other group, the Christians for this 2000 plus years? There are possible resolutions, the Christians could become Jews, which isn’t going to happen because Christians are right. Or the Jews could become Christians, which isn’t happening, because they are a stiff necked people Exodus 32:9, as God says. And so after the initial persecution by the Jews, during the Middle Ages, Jews were banned from many Christian kingdoms. There were various other skirmishes and it all came to a head in Nazi Germany. This event rings so loud in our ears that we don’t think clearly on the issue at all. We go back and rewrite history to say that Martin Luther was an anti-semite in is old age. We even go back and ignore many verses in the Bible which put the Jews in a bad light, because hating the Jews has become the greatest evil in our minds. It’s not, the greatest evil was not the murder of 9 million Jews, it was the murder of Jesus the Christ. This is what it means to be a Christian, this is what we should believe. We have allowed the holocaust to give birth to multiculturalism, and that beast has become more sacred to us than our Christian faith.

So how should we treat Jews today? Of course we should love them. We should help them when we see them in need. We should be gracious, kind and compassionate. But we don’t get our theology from them. We don’t even ask them how they read the Old Testament, because they read it wrong. And ultimately we don’t want them around, we want them to become Christians. Every last one of them. Diversity in this situation is bad. Sure we can eat their food and share their stories over a peace pipe, but we don’t follow their religion. Which is why the term ‘Messianic Jew’ is so disturbing. Why do you want to be associated with that stiff necked people? Should I and my Nordic brethren start calling ourselves Messianic Pagans? Why isn’t the term ‘Christian’ enough? I think it is. We shouldn’t want to keep the Jews around so we can feel good that we aren’t a Nazi. We shouldn’t keep them around so we can have diversity. We should want them to become Christians so we can all be at peace on this earth and share eternity with them.

It’s also strange to note the various attacks on Christianity that have come from Jews in modern times. The two foremost being Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. But that’s a story for another day.

So how does Islam fit into this picture? Muhammed saw the need to connect his new tribal cult to the past as well. So he mixed together a bunch of Arab cultural history, with parts of the Bible, Old and New Testament. This becomes even more obvious when you compare what he did with what Joseph Smith did. They were like Simon in the Bible using the system of Christianity for their own ends. Simon wanted to make money, they used it for political power. And so Islam has historically been seen as a Christian heresy rather than mere paganism. Satan headed off the spread of the Gospel by stealing it’s tactics, in this new world made by Christ. And so as Tertullian said “the devil is an ape of God”.

The problem with Islam isn’t that it didn’t evolve the way Christianity did, it’s that it can’t evolve, because this type of rebirth is a Christian exclusive. It is the point of Christianity. Christ came back from the dead, Muhammed did not. We all share in his baptism into death, and become reborn. Old things are made new, including Rome and the whole world. Muhammed resists this. The whole idea that our culture is progressing, evolving, changing for the better has it’s roots in Christ. Of course it has become an idol in many ways, but this is the opposite of Islam. Anyone who has spent a minute in the middle east knows this well. There is no humility in Islam, which is why it is so resistant to changes for the better. There is no science in Islam because science is about systematically admitting your mistakes. Islam is a stick in the mud and the mud is as dry as the desert sand of the Middle East. And if you try to move the stick they kill you. Joseph Smith’s tribal cult has been able to progress better because it was built on American cultural history which was built on Christianity, rather than Arab paganism. Plus it always remained a minority in a greater Christian America. Islam headed off the harvest of the Gospel by telling people what they wanted to hear and the benefits of grift led to a significant tribal fighting force which began subduing people by force. Nearly every country on the earth today which is Islamic, became that way by the sword. This is Islam.

So how do we treat Mohammedans today? As with Jews, or any group, we love them. We ultimately want them all converted. But we don’t convert them by force. I heard Baroness Cox lamenting that Islam didn’t allow converts away from Islam. She said we needed to preserve the concept of peaceable conversion. But who says? That is a Christian idea Matthew 26:25. To ask Islam to convert people peaceably and to stop persecuting converts-away-from-Islam, is to ask them to become Christian Gen 27:40.  Live and let live is a Christian idea Romans 12:18, and it’s not even the whole story, for as I said we want the whole world on our side. Only then can we have peace. Why would we want Muslims around? So we can fight over things with them? Emmanuel, God with us, came down to earth to make peace between God and men Ephesians 2:14. That is the only way. Men at peace with God and Men at war with God, are going to be in conflict Matthew 10:34. Expect it. That’s what Christ promised us. They hated you because they hated me first. I came to bring the sword to turn father against son. . . That’s how it works. We should not seek some sort of cobbled stalemate with false religions. That will not make World Peace happen. And by wanting it to happen in that way, we are suggesting that things can be fine without Jesus. Of course pagans not killing you is better than pagans killing you. But our ultimate goal should be all pagans becomming Christians. We don’t measure success by a lack of body count, or a suspension of violence. We don’t worship peace, or life, we worship God.

So we don’t have three great faiths in a wonderful mix of diversity. We have one faith corrupted long before Jesus, leading him to judge them by their own promises. They entered into a covenant with God through Moses, then they broke it, so he judged them. But then God bailed them out and blessed them by sending his son, a Jew to be a real Jew and a real man. As Paul says those who follow him and become real Jews are now Christians, Romans 2. That is the only great religion. Then around 600AD a false prophet came along and corrupted this great religion for his own ends. He began waging war on Christendom. Millions are being slaughtered and enslaved to this day. As a pastor once said “if sin worked it wouldn’t be sin”. And Islam doesn’t work, even the non militant kind. At best it is a cheap copy of Christianity. What are we clinging to here?

Even Kanye west says Jesus is King. We hang up banners in our churches and sing songs to the same effect. Yet we hate kings. This is understandable given George III’s abuse of power. And there is a lot of American tradition trying to avoid Catholics and the post Reformation bloodshed that took place in Europe. We love our Republic in the shape of Rome with a few twists. But we have allowed these views to alter the words and meaning of Scripture. We sometimes get the idea that other religions are like other political parties. And the worst thing is being a partisan. We have been lead to believe that the middle of the road man, or the man who makes up his own mind, is the highest good. As if Jesus didn’t say that thing about being lukewarm Rev. 3:16. But it’s not all about our choice. It’s not about campaigning. And disturbingly many evangelicals are taking the evangelism out of evangelical. Because imposing your beliefs is judging, another false god. But God doesn’t need us to put up posters and hand out campaign ads called tracts. The whole message of the Gospel is that Jesus is reigning on high. Through his humility he became exalted to the highest position Romans 8. It’s true whether you believe it or not. And God used the image of a king, he has a position of authority. And until all the skirmishers admit that, there will be conflict. But we should want everyone under this authority. We should want every knee to bow Philip 2:10. We should want his will on earth as it is in heaven. Which is very close to that term ‘theocracy’ which is thrown around.

While God doesn’t need us, he has chosen to use us. We are his body on this earth I Cor. 12:27. We act out his will. Christians who mock Mike Pense, or anyone else, for trying to govern as the Bible instructs are heaping judgement on themselves. This is what Christians are supposed to do. There does seem to be a lot of benefits from spreading power over a body like congress or a church board rather than a single leader. But there have been good kings and there have been horrible church boards. These are aspects that we are free to work out and explore as the Pilgrim did when they rejected a form of collectivism in favor of a free market system. Relations between men are what it’s all about, but men who have bad relationships with God are always going to be a problem. These are realms within Christendom we are dealing with. Christians were to preach to all men, this includes leaders, Christians must figure out how to govern/organize.

The term theocracy seems to be an attempt to describe what took place in Israel before the kings. It was a thing it had characteristics. Samuel says the people rejected God because they wanted a king. Deuteronomy 17 set up rules for a king long before this so, having a king is not the problem. The problem was they wanted a king like other nations. But what happened to Saul? If this shift from ‘theocracy’ to ‘monarchy’ was such a paradigm shift, who got rid of Saul? Why wasn’t Jonathan the next king? God lamented that he made Saul king I Samuel 15:11. God was still in charge, all these men were his agents. Samuel had real authority. And God used Samuel to appoint David. The difference between ‘theocracy’ and ‘monarchy’ here at the beginning where the terms derive, has nothing to do with wanting to please the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And people who want to please God today can do so in all sorts of different kinds of governments.

If applying your faith to a situation is not your first step then whatever your first step is, is really your god. But today God doesn’t send us people like Moses to give us direct words from Him. He doesn’t have to, he already sent us Moses and he wrote everything down. He also sent us all the other prophets, and his Son, Jesus the Christ. And they wrote a bunch more stuff down. Applying these writings, the Bible, to how we handle relationships between other people in communities, does not make this a theocracy. Reading God’s word and applying it to government, is not a bad thing. It is not the source of war, it is the only solution to war. It is the only thing Christians should be doing. To invite other sources in, is to be demonic. What other sources are there? He who is not for us is against us Matthew 12:30. It doesn’t mean we kill those in opposition, it means we convert them Matthew 28. How dare you lament when God’s principles are implemented at any level of government. The world has sadly convinced many Christians to hide their light under a bushel Matthew 5:15.

So to end with the beginning, let’s define government. Government is the exercise of authority. Who holds ultimate authority? Is it the people, voting? Is it the smart people dictating? Statistics?  Your FB friends? No it is Jesus King of Kings. And he didn’t hide his will, he gave us his Word and he delights in us working it out. From his word we can see that God sets up various forms of government. Kings, Church Leaders, Fathers. Each submits to others in different ways. Each has their own realm. Separating them does not exclude any of them from the ultimate head that is Jesus. Paul makes it clear in Romans 13 that God set up civil governments to hinder evil by punishment(that is their only job anything else is them trying to be God). Judges are to work these things out. And Christians make the best judges as Paul says in I Corinthians. And this has proven itself in human history. Our system of law has created the greatest human flourishing the world has ever known. Look around. And it was based on British Common Law which was basically based on Old Testament Law. It works. The separation of church and state didn’t mean that Biblical principles have no place in the State. It meant that the civil government didn’t punish people for which church they went to. But most common was the requirement that you attend a church before you could become a civil servant. And your place in church leadership was based on your home leadership. These are all things which have been sorted out for generations. Why do we reinvent the wheel, creating more problems? Why do we want some other source of authority to come in? Whose side are you on?

I was just made aware of this code by Kyle Smith over at National Review, and I wanted to read the whole thing for myself.  This is the code governing the content of movies from the silent picture era to the cultural revolution of 1968.  And it’s pretty astonishing, well at least in light of very recent events.  Even Smith writing for a Conservative periodical mocks the code for the way it supposedly hampered artistic expression.  Which is little more than a euphemism for what scripture might call “what the evil do in secret” or “coarse jesting” “or “calling evil good”.

Preamble

Motion picture producers recognize the high trust and confidence which have been placed in them by the people of the world and which have made motion pictures a universal form of entertainment.

They recognize their responsibility to the public because of this trust and because entertainment and art are important influences in the life of a nation.

Hence, though regarding motion pictures primarily as entertainment without any explicit purpose of teaching or propaganda, they know that the motion picture within its own field of entertainment may be directly responsible for spiritual or moral progress, for higher types of social life, and for much correct thinking.

During the rapid transition from silent to talking pictures they realized the necessity and the opportunity of subscribing to a Code to govern the production of talking pictures and of acknowledging this responsibility.

On their part, they ask from the public and from public leaders a sympathetic understanding of their purposes and problems and a spirit of cooperation that will allow them the freedom and opportunity necessary to bring the motion picture to a still higher level of wholesome entertainment for all the people.

First it strikes me that humans in the United States, Americans, used to take what they did seriously.  The dressed up in suits and ties and took responsibility for what they did.  They realized that every thought should be taken captive and that what they did had repercussions on other people.  It was not merely entertainment, this reads like the Hippocratic oath or an oath taken by and engineer.  The eye is the window to the soul, which isn’t so much about peering into the eyes of your lover as it is appreciating that what you look at affects your soul.  Today we pretend that none of this matters.  Hollywood is often making excuses or claiming that they bear no responsibility for what they produce or that is has no negative affects on the youth.  They conjure ‘studies’ that have about as much respectability as Jim Jong Un’s golf score.  On the other hand behind the scenes they make every attempt to live by the new code.  And don’t think that they had codes and we do not.  It’s just that they were honest about it, and we are not. We have arbitrary cancel culture, our forefathers wrote the code down for all to see.   The most simple example is how many of these old movies would not be allowed to be made today.  Oh sure we would put some woke veneer on it as if we were morally superior to those old racists, but the reality is we just don’t like the message of Christianity coming through in these old movies.  

General Principles

1.   No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrong-doing, evil or sin.

2.   Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.

3.   Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

Today our code is nearly the opposite.  Just a few days ago there was a call to make 20% of characters on TV shows sexual deviants.  Almost every movies is purposely created to lower moral standards.  Comedy is almost dead for having done so.  For the last 20 years shock, and ‘pushing the limits’ have been the goals of most comedies, to the point that there are no more limits.  Even the most perverse obscene acts are almost normal.  The final frontier seems to be polygamy and pedophilia. Go us.

And the code even has the audacity to mention sin.  How dare they!  But the fact is we treat any number of things as sin.  Like say if a woman did what her husband asked, was submissive and meek.  That would be a sin to feminists like us.  Let’s say a Christian was portrayed in a good light, again sin.  Let’s say there weren’t enough token black people in the movie, sin.  And the proof of this is in the Rotten Tomatoes reviews.  Movies today are not rated favorably for meeting any standard of acting, cinematography, or for excellence in any aspect of this art form, they are given good marks for being politically correct.  Is Black Panther really the best Marvel movie?  I think not.  Kingsman was one of the worst movies I have ever seen.  But it got 74% for a scene slaughtering Christians, which single handedly breaks every rule in this old code.

Then the general principles are fleshed out:

I.   Crimes Against the Law

These shall never be presented in such a way as to throw sympathy with the crime as against law and justice or to inspire others with a desire for imitation.

Each category has specific examples which I have left out.  Today  there are more movies glorifying thieves, murderers and the sexually perverse, than you could even count.  As we become more Marxist it’s no surprise that property crime isn’t even a consideration anymore.  Almost every movie portrays the destruction of millions in property and it is almost never portrayed as a problem.  Movies like The Usual Suspects, The Italian Job, Momento, Tarantino, Oceans 11,12, 13 and on and on where the hero is the bad guy.  It’s no surprise that so many young people are walking around with Che shirts, or why the bad guy of the 20th century, Communism is now see as the good guy by many American. But can you imagine a movie today where the hero smoked, didn’t care about recycling, and went around destroying solar panels?

II.   Sex

The sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld. Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing.

Wow, how many churches even believe this anymore?   Aside from a few corny recent Christian movies, I don’t think a major studio has portrayed marriage as sacred, let alone the home, since 1968.  It’s pretty obvious that their goal has been to undermine marriage and the family in every way they possibly could.  Marriage is at best on par with sleeping around and at worst a prison.  And the home is just where you come to plug in your phone.  The concept of a sacred place where families pass on tradition and nurture healthy relationships before God, went away some time in the 80’s.  Now we have garbage like the Handmaid’s Tale mocking the home, in some insanely twisted version of a history that never happened.  But can you imagine a movie made today in which gay people were mocked and rightly so.  I mean seriously you can’t tell the difference between a fruitful womb and a poop shoot?  Are you an idiot?  No doubt that offended you, because we are just as uptight as they were and our codes are just as strictly enforced.  The only problem is that our codes are backwards and often complete arbitrary.

III.   Vulgarity

The treatment of low, disgusting, unpleasant, though not necessarily evil, subjects should be guided always by the dictates of good taste and a proper regard for the sensibilities of the audience.

Unfortunately the audience no longer has any sensibilities after years of bombardment.  Are we even allowed to consider anything as vulgar anymore?  Oh maybe people who don’t eat organic, or people who don’t have the newest iPhone, or horror or horrors, someone who didn’t go to college.  The most vulgar thing today is probably a Christian from the South clinging to their guns and their religion which no studio would dare characterize in a good light.  People on drugs, or slaves to some form of evil are not seen as low or disgusting, they are seen as victims of all the people who are not trapped in some form of evil.

IV.   Obscenity

Obscenity in word, gesture, reference, song, joke or by suggestion (even when likely to be understood only by part of the audience) is forbidden.

Again this is almost a prescription for the post-modern screenplay.  You can see this explicitly pronounced in the music industry which is just the sister to the movie business.

But can you imagine a movie made today in which speech codes were violated?  What if the hero said he wanted to build a wall?  Oh my!  Or a hero who told cross-dressers that they needed mental counseling?  What if he openly mocked Muhammed?  We clap down on such things with the speed of a guy yelling allah akbar as he lit up his vest.

V.   Profanity

It’s interesting that there are divisions between vulgarity, obscenity and profanity.  I’m not sure many contemporary men could distinguish between these in a meaningful fashion.  Taking the Lord’s name in vein was forbidden.  But there are also many words disrespecting women and minorities and gays which were forbidden such as alley cat, broad, hot or slut; chink, dago, kike, wop, yid or nigger; fairy, sissy or pansy.  For a culture which was supposedly racist, sexist and homophobic, they sure protected these groups from being attacked on film.

VI.   Costume

1.   Complete nudity is never permitted. This includes nudity in fact or in silhouette, or any licentious notice thereof by other characters in the pictures.

2.   Undressing scenes should be avoided, and never used save where essential to the plot.

3.   Indecent or undue exposure is forbidden.

4.   Dancing costumes intended to permit undue exposure of indecent movements in the dance are forbidden.

I don’t even need to comment.

VII.   Dances

1.   Dances suggesting or representing sexual actions or indecent passion are forbidden.

2.   Dances which emphasize indecent movements are to be regarded as obscene.

From what I can tell, the only current use of dance is to lead to the sex scene.  We even have whole movies mocking people who would dare prohibit anyone from dancing seductively.

VIII.   Religion

1.   No film or episode may throw ridicule on any religious faith.

2.   Ministers of religion in their character as ministers of religion should not be used as comic characters or as villains.

3.   Ceremonies of any definite religion should be carefully and respectfully handled.

Again, Hollywood would have nothing to make movies about if they couldn’t mock Christians.  Before we started handing out special treatment under terms like tolerance and multiculturalism, the fact is that Christian America was more tolerant than it is today.  These terms in their current usage are just a veil for hatred of Christ and his followers.

 IX.   Locations

The treatment of bedrooms must be governed by good taste and delicacy.

Once you respected a ladies bedroom, not it’s center stage for many movies, and somehow a sign of her power.  The only sacred space in our movies is probably the mosque.

X.   National Feelings

1.   The use of the flag shall be consistently respectful.

2.   The history, institutions, prominent people and citizenry of all nations shall be represented fairly.

Wow, and for doing just this, our President is labeled a racist.

And then they expound on the theory of art and humanity, which applies not only to motion pictures.  Just the idea that there is such an objective way of viewing the subject is so refreshing in our day when everything is thought to be in motion and up to the eye of the beholder.  This was not always so.  Our forefathers used to respect those who went before them and to learn from them rather than assume they were just a bunch of haters.

Reasons Supporting Preamble of Code

I.   Theatrical motion pictures, that is, pictures intended for the theatre as distinct from pictures intended for churches, schools, lecture halls, educational movements, social reform movements, etc., are primarily to be regarded as entertainment. Mankind has always recognized the importance of entertainment and its value in rebuilding the bodies and souls of human beings.

But it has always recognized that entertainment can be of a character either HELPFUL or HARMFUL to the human race, and in consequence has clearly distinguished between:

(a)   Entertainment which tends to improve the race, or at least to re-create and rebuild human beings exhausted with the realities of life; and

(b)   Entertainment which tends to degrade human beings, or to lower their standards of life and living.

Hence the Moral importance of entertainment is something Which has been universally recognized. It enters intimately into the lives of men and women and affects them closely; it occupies their minds and affections during leisure hours; and ultimately touches the whole of their lives. A man may be judged by his standard of entertainment as easily as by the standard of his work.

So correct entertainment raises the whole standard of a nation.

Wrong entertainment lowers the whole living conditions and moral ideals of a race.

Note, for example, the healthy reactions to healthful sports, like baseball, golf; the unhealthy reactions to sports like cockfighting, bullfighting, bear baiting, etc.

Note, too, the effect on ancient nations of gladiatorial combats, the obscene plays of Roman times, etc.

II.   Motion pictures are very important as art. Though a new art, possibly a combination art, it has the same object as the other arts, the presentation of human thought, emotion, and experience, in terms of an appeal to the soul through the senses.

Here, as in entertainment,

Art enters intimately into the lives of human beings.

Art can be morally good, lifting men to higher levels. This has been done through good music, great painting, authentic fiction, poetry, drama.

Art can be morally evil in its effects. This is the case clearly enough with unclean art, indecent books, suggestive drama. The effect on the lives of men and women is obvious.

Note: It has often been argued that art in itself is unmoral, neither good nor bad. This is perhaps true of the thing product of some person’s mind, and the intention of that mind was either good or bad morally when it produced the thing.

Besides, the thing has its effect upon those who come into contact with it. In both these ways, this is, as a product of a mind and as the cause of definite effects, it has a deep moral significance and an unmistakable moral quality.

Hence: The motion pictures, which are the most popular arts for the masses, have their moral quality from the intention of the minds which produce them and from their effects on the moral lives and reactions of their audiences. This gives them a most important moral quality.

1.   They reproduce the morality of the men who use the pictures as a medium for the expression of their idea and ideals.

2.   They affect the moral standards of those who, through the screen, take in these ideas and ideals.

In the case of the motion pictures, this effect may be particularly emphasized because no art has so quick and so widespread an appeal to the masses. It has become in an incredibly short period the art of the multitudes.

III.   The motion picture, because of its importance as entertainment and because of the trust placed in it by the peoples of the world, has special moral obligations:

A.   Most arts appeal to the mature. This art appeals at once to every class, mature, immature, developed, underdeveloped, law abiding, criminal. Music has its grades for different classes; so has literature and drama. This art of the motion picture, combining as it does the two fundamental appeals of looking at a picture and listening to a story, at once reached every class of society.

B.   By reason of the mobility of a film and the ease of picture distribution, and because of the possibility of duplicating positives in large quantities, this art reaches places unpenetrated by other forms of art.

C.   Because of these two facts, it is difficult to produce films intended for only certain classes of people. The exhibitor’s theatres are built for the masses, for the cultivated and the rude, the mature and the immature, the self-respecting and the criminal. Films, unlike books and music, can with difficulty be confined to certain selected groups.

D.   The latitude given to film material cannot, in consequence, be as wide as the latitude given to book material. In addition:

(a)   A book describes; a film vividly presents. One presents on a cold page; the other by apparently living people.

(b)   A book reaches the mind through words merely; a film reaches the eyes and ears through the reproduction of actual events.

(c)   The reaction of a reader to a book depends largely on the keenness of the reader’s imagination; the reaction to a film depends on the vividness of presentation.

Hence many things which might be described or presented in a book could not possibly be presented in a film.

E.   This is also true when comparing the film with the newspaper.

(a)   Newspapers present by description, films by actual presentation.

(b)   Newspapers are after the fact and present things as having taken place, the film gives the events in the process of enactment and with apparent reality of life.

F.   Everything possible in a play is not possible in a film:

(a)   Because of the large audience of the film, and its consequential mixed character. Psychologically, the larger the audience, the lower the moral mass resistance to suggestion.

(b)   Because through light, enlargement of character, presentation, scenic emphasis, etc., the screen story is brought closer to the audience than the play.

(c)   The enthusiasm for and interest in the film actors and actresses, developed beyond anything of the sort in history, makes the audience largely sympathetic toward the characters they portray and the stories in which they figure. Hence the audience is more ready to confuse actor and actress and the characters they portray, and it is more receptive of the emotions and ideals presented by their favorite stars.

G.   Small communities, remote from sophistication and from the hardening process which often takes place in the ethical and moral standards of groups in large cities, are easily and readily reached by any sort of film.

H.   The grandeur of mass settings, large action, spectacular features, etc., affect and arouses more intensely the emotional side of the audience.

In general, the mobility, popularity, accessibility, emotional appeal, vividness, straightforward presentation of fact in the film make for more intimate contact with a larger audience and for greater emotional appeal.

Hence the larger moral responsibilities of the motion pictures.

 

Reasons Underlying the General Principles

1.   No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of the crime, wrong-doing, evil or sin.

This is done:

(1)   When evil is made to appear attractive or alluring, and good is made to appear unattractive.

(2)   When the sympathy of the audience is thrown on the side of crime, wrong-doing, evil, sin. The same thing is true of a film that would throw sympathy against goodness, honor, innocence, purity, or honesty.

Note: Sympathy with a person who sins is not the same as sympathy with the sin or crime of which he is guilty. We may feel sorry for the plight of the murderer or even understand the circumstances which led him to his crime. We may not feel sympathy with the wrong which he has done. The presentation of evil is often essential for art or fiction or drama. This in itself is not wrong provided:

a.   That evil is not presented alluringly. Even if later in the film the evil is condemned or punished, it must not he allowed to appear so attractive that the audience’s emotions are drawn to desire or approve so strongly that later the condemnation is forgotten and only the apparent joy of the sin remembered.

b.   That throughout, the audience feels sure that evil is wrong and good is right.

2.   Correct standards of life shall, as far as possible, be presented.

A wide knowledge of life and of living is made possible through the film. When right standards are consistently presented, the motion picture exercises the most powerful influences. It builds character, develops right ideals, inculcates correct principles, and all this in attractive story form.

If motion pictures consistently hold up for admiration high types of characters and present stories that will affect lives for the better, they can become the most powerful natural force for the improvement of mankind.

3.   Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

By natural law is understood the law which is written in the hearts of all mankind, the great underlying principles of right and justice dictated by conscience.

By human law is understood the law written by civilized nations.

1.   The presentation of crimes against the law is often necessary for the carrying out of the plot. But the presentation must not throw sympathy with the crime as against the law nor with the criminal as against those who punish him.

2.   The courts of the land should not he presented as unjust. This does not mean that a single court may not be represented as unjust, much less than a single court official must not be presented this way. But the court system of the country must not suffer as a result of this presentation.

 

Reasons Underlying Particular Applications

1.   Sin and evil enter into the story of human beings and hence in themselves are valid dramatic material.

2.   In the use of this material, it must be distinguished between sin which repels by its very nature, and sins which often attract.

a.   In the first class come murder, most theft, many legal crimes, lying, hypocrisy, cruelty, etc.

b.   In the second class come sex sins, sins and crimes of apparent heroism, such as banditry, daring thefts, leadership in evil, organized crime, revenge, etc.

The first class needs less care in treatment, as sins and crimes of this class are naturally unattractive. The audience instinctively condemns all such and is repelled.

Hence the important objective must be to avoid the hardening of the audience, especially of those who are young and impressionable, to the thought and fact of crime. People can become accustomed even to murder, cruelty, brutality, and repellent crimes, if these are too frequently repeated.

The second class needs great care in handling, as the response of human nature to their appeal is obvious. This is treated more fully below.

3.   A careful distinction can be made between films intended for general distribution, and films intended for use in theatres restricted to a limited audience. Themes and plots quite appropriate for the latter would be altogether out of place and dangerous in the former.

Note: The practice of using a general theatre and limiting its patronage during the showing of a certain film to “Adults Only” is not completely satisfactory and is only partially effective.

However, maturer minds may easily understand and accept without harm subject matter in plots which do younger people positive harm.

Hence: If there should be created a special type of theatre, catering exclusively to an adult audience for plays of this character (plays with problem themes, difficult discussions and maturer treatment) it would seem to afford an outlet, which does not now exist, for pictures unsuitable for general distribution but permissible for exhibitions to a restricted audience.

So I ask you, which set of rules is more Biblical, this code or the implied, hidden, finagled, fleeting code we enforce by tweet and social media lynching?   Why were they so much more honest, and thoughtful about their codes?

Source: https://productioncode.dhwritings.com/multipleframes_productioncode.php

There are few better movies than Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, especially for Halloween.  I mean a guy dresses up as a bat to fight crime, seriously?  I’m not even sure what it is that makes it so good.  Is it the soundtrack by someone who may or may not be known as Prince?  I doubt it.  Is it the stupendous ‘80s stunts?  I doubt it. Is it the ridiculous, rocket powered custom Corvette? Maybe.

Batman 1989. Lobby Card.

Burton creates another world and populates it with characters apt for that world. And he succeeds in being other worldly while so many movies, especially today, can’t help but be mouthpieces for lame transient political causes.  Batman has stood the test of time. In fact this year marks the 30th anniversary of the film.  But it doesn’t feel old, the technology of the effects is not limiting to the story even 30 years on.  Aside from the Prince tracks, the Elfman themes are timeless and unmistakable to this day. There are even hints that the movie is older than it is.  The crazed Joker’s affinity for modern art while he defaces the works of the ancient masters, and God, are a jab at modernism from something older.  Most modern artists are as depraved as a playing card villain spray painting a museum.  The whole feel of the movie reminds me of some medieval feudal city state, and not just because of his armor collection.  Bruce Wayne Lord of the realm of Gotham, suits up to fight for his peasants when they need him.  The Joker and his besieging army even employ a sort of Trojan Horse when they are not using other means of subversion to attack the kingdom.  And good acting never goes out of style.  Keaton is Batman, to see him in other roles is to wonder what Batman is doing out of his movie.  And Nicholson is as bad as he need be. The one reminder of the movie’s age,  is how much more chaotic evil we demand of our villains today, being much more desensitized.

Gotham is dark, but it’s one light is photographer Vicki Vale.  Kim Basinger plays a Lady to Keaton’s Lord, complete with flowing hair and flowing gown.  She is beautiful, innocent, strong, capable, and feminine.  Oh for such women today, but that no longer seems to be allowed.  To maintain the theme of Arthurian myth, we even have a big of a love triangle with Vicki, Batman and Joker.  One of my favorite lines in the movie is from Vicki soon after she discovers that Bruce and Batman are one: “I just gotta know, are we gonna try to love each other?”  The kingdom is under siege, her lord is in the middle of fighting it’s battles against a mad man and she is wondering how their relationship is doing.  It’s just so wonderful.  Bruce says he would like to , but he has to go to work.  Reminding us that every man is a lord of his own manor, battling the world each day for his lady. The year may change, the price of the castle may vary, but the story line is the same, woman wants to be loved.  And that story should end, or begin in a cathedral, after he fights off his demons.

The other great line of the movie is from Nicholson near the end at the top of that cathedral: “I mean, I say I made you, you gotta say you made me. How childish can you get?”  And so one of the great themes of this and all Batman storylines:” we create our own demons.”  Oops sorry about that, slipped over to the other side there for a moment.  But there are few truer ideas in all of literature.  The best stories are of men and their own faults.  Blaming someone else for your problems is the essence of the coward.  Jack Napier made Batman, Batman made Joker.  We do it to ourselves.  Blaming someone else, or especially God for your problems is nothing new.  “The woman you gave me”  But it is certainly all the rage today.  And while we live in a world lit up by giant screens always in our faces, our world is become darker than Gotham.  We don’t allow Batman to be the hero.  Literally the newest iteration of the movie has no Batman, just Joker.  We don’t allow women to light the homes we come home too.  We drag her out in the streets of Gotham, butcher her hair, strip her of her flowing raiment and demand she work for the man.  The fairy tale which Vicki Vale preserved for us is banished from our public square.  And we have done this to ourselves,  we are worse than Joker.  And we are no less painted up, we put a happy face on our evil too.  It’s not murder it’s “a choice”.  It’s not the break up of the family, it’s ‘no fault divorce.’  It’s not the perversion of sodomy, it’s “a loving relationship”.  It’s not disobedience to God’s word it’s “Christian freedom” “a God thing” “God speaking to me”.  And so, like many stories told the right way up, Batman is more Christian than the stories we tell ourselves in many of our churches.  Did you ever dance with the Devil in the pale moon light?  Probably.  So knock it off and watch the movie tonight instead, when it’s nice an dark.  I’m not sure whether to watch in on VHS or HD digital.  But I doubt I can go wrong with either one.

Having a form of godliness,

but denying the power thereof

from such turn away

II Timothy 3:5

I have a latent post somewhere about the evils of the oft repeated: “I have a relationship not a religion”.  In our day that mantra, that catechism we might say, brings more problems than it is worth.  But the idea it was intended to guard against, is the point of this verse.  We all understand that religious institutions can become hollowed out in the middle.  The form remains but the Spirit is gone.  Today we are met with a lot of claims of Spirit with no form.  In fact form is thought to be bad, gnosticism as it used to be called.  Neither of these is particularly good on their own.  Gnostics attacking Catholics and other dead established churches is more of a sad joke than anything.  We can admit that having the form only is a bad thing.  But can we also admit that it is not just religious institutions which suffer from this problem?  Or perhaps we just need to realize that there are only religious institutions.  Culture comes from the ‘cultus’ the ‘cult’.  What we act out is what we believe and that belief system is religion, by any name.

Can we just put he Spirit back in the Body and get on with it?
Illustration by Luigi Schiavonetti. Etching. c. 1808.

The more I mess with establishments the more I find nothing there.  The lights are on, but no one is home.  The form is there but there is no power.  Which generally leads to defensiveness.  One of the starkest examples is taking place in our airports every day.  It’s security theater.  The TSA has a 98% failure rate.  That means that 98% of weapons get through their security, in test runs.  But everyone puts on their TSA costume every day and pretends they are accomplishing something.  And we the people put up with it for some reason.  Because the sad reality is we like dead religion, it makes us feel better to go through the genuflection of taking off our shoes, the penance of bowing to the scanners and the prayers we utter, “please don’t let me be picked for a ‘random’ screening”.  So we let this dead religion continue.

The rubric of theater is so apt for so many things.  We have security theater in our airports and safety theater in our workplaces.  As government drones force us into religious services known as safety meetings.  All with less life than the ascetic monk who died weeks ago and had just been thought to be going for extra credit.  Safety is a combination of skill and intelligence and has nothing to do with government statistics forced upon the masses like the rules of indulgence.  But put on your orange vests and get out your lumbar support and standup desks, and put your faith in the mighty OSHA.  Everyone is doing it.

We could lump in the rest of the alphabet soup of government agencies.  EPA worship has cost countless millions of dollars and even killed thousands with encyclicals like CAFE standards.  The same could be said for the EPA, FDA, or even the FAA.  Recent groundings of 737 MAX planes now appears to be an attempt by Boeing to comply with environmental regulations and FAA regulations and still turn a profit.  There is no power, does anyone even know what the original intent of any of these religions was?  What was the spirit of them for?  Who knows.  There is no spirit.  We bow down with no heart in it.  No sense of a better world, or of pushing frontiers in the name of our Creator.  Just lemmings whose parting words are no longer ‘godspeed’ but ‘be safe’.  Be safe for something, I forgot what.

More sinister yet is the death of our legal system.  This the heart of our turning from the real God to false ones.  The once great edifice founded on the British common law system which traces its roots back to Alfred the great, who got it from the Old Testament, in service of his God.  Today everyone is still there in their costumes, the judge wears a robe, the lawyers wear monkey suits.  In England the garb includes a powdered wig.  But for something that should be so important can you name your local judges?  Do you care at all what goes on there?  Do you care about the spray paint graffiti on this great edifice like, no fault divorce, complete lack of due process, and laws written merely to get someone we don’t like rather than to serve an actual standard of justice?  Even worse we created the home game, like the personal dashboard Jesus, we militarize millions of cops with their pocket judge and jury to go around accusing people of ridiculous traffic violations.  And just like the endless rules of the Catholic church, written in an unknown Latin, our rules are written in lawyer-speak, and number more than any man can count.  In the New Testament Jesus regularly mocks the Pharisees for their dead religion, more correctly their wrong religion.  But we shouldn’t separate them from their real task, they were the people’s lawyers.  And lest we think that was a theocracy and our system is so intelligently separate, church and state.  What exactly is a law?  It is imposing morality on someone, that’s how it works.  There are no laws which do not have moral backing.  Our Pharisees are lawyers and they have forgotten the purpose of law just like those whom Jesus ridiculed.  The hoops they create and then collect millions for navigating, are just as sinister.  And one day Jesus will damn them to eternal fire as well.  They mock the poor as they make their careers exploiting them, climbing ever further up the greasy pole, to President or behind-the-scenes-government-lawyer.  Don’t put your faith in this system with David French, be Andrew McCarthy, come to the light.  Don’t get caught up in years and years and piles of money required to get to the end of any trial.  Don’t show them respect, seek Church arbitration as Paul counseled.

And even worse, we forget that politicians are the lawyers who write all these crazy rules.  Politicians, who are usually the most disliked group of people on the planet.  Yet what we the people demand of them has less to do with character and statesman ability, and more to do with outward trappings.  Speech codes, dress codes, focus group driven everything.  This reached it’s height under Obama, who not only had to be clean and articulate with properly ironed pants, he had to have the right skin color.  The next diversity qualification is searching for a woman or half-pseudo-sexual-deviant.  And what happens when you don’t follow this religious creed?  Ask Trump.  It is fair to say that his supporters are the brave few who want relationship and not religion.  They like him, and they don’t care about D.C. dogma.

And finally the most prevalent form without a soul, is science.  The scientific method was a simple organized way of testing the real world.  It had rules for ensuring that experiments could be conducted and repeated.  A peer system was created to ensure that truth was discovered, with no manipulation.  This system became so successful among the applied sciences that every field of study wanted in on the action.  And so these sacraments were adopted in all of academia.  And as Satan ate out their heart with deception and evil, men didn’t want to face the truth they were discovering.  Science begun by faithful Christians serving their God, became a framework for lies and manipulation.  Men in white coats need only utter the sacred word ‘science’ and the masses bow down, casting their money upon the alter.  That’s not a baby, it’s a mass of cells, a priest of  Science says so. Macro evolution is real despite having no scientific evidence, just put your faith in the institution.  Chromosomes no longer matter, gender is a social construct, professionals said so.  Sex for fruitful procreation, can be ignored, we have a study.  Discipline of children can be ignored, we have a study.  Oh and also the planet is dying because humans drive cars.  Despite a fossil record containing 98% of species before humans tuned the first carburetor. Despite volcanic activity venting more gas than all the cars ever.   Just put your faith in science, and you can gratify your sexual urges and go to paradise with 72 virgins.  Excuse me, I get my false religions mixed up.  The form and the respect for Science and academia remain, but the power is gone.  Sure some mechanistic ends are still met, machines move, buildings are built, diseases are cured.  But no one knows why.  And soon, they will give it up, white robes and all, because woke, racism, patriarchy.

But I don’t really like this cathedral of the West in ruin, I want to turn away as Paul commands Timothy.  Can’t we have both form and Spirit?  Can’t we have religion and a relationship?  We Christians have the power of God, we can move mountains, why do we let the church die in exchange for all these false religions?  What is wrong with you people?  I think I know, you want a relationship with the world and not religious devotion to the One True God.  You want religion to be handled by all these dead systems. You don’t like the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob, who brought you out of Egypt, he embarrasses you in front of all these false priests.  And you hate his son Jesus the Christ despite claiming to feel something about him.  So knock it off and put the Spirit back into this incredible form, built by the faith of our ancestors, before it’s too late.

In the Christian circles I have lived in my whole life, despite trying to escape, I often hear people say things like: “The Old Testament Law was impossible, that’s why Jesus had to come.”  Which I find, not to be true at all.  The whole point of the Law is that you are going to fail, and there are remedies for that failure.   What, you can’t sacrifice a few turtle doves?  You can’t stop cooking goats in their mother’s milk?  You can’t stop touching dead bodies?  Well even if you do we’ll give you a few days of separation to cleanse yourself, and you are back in the fellowship.  Or some of the harder ones; You can’t stop having sex with your neighbor’s wife?  You can’t stop pretending your friends butt is a woman?  Well there is a solution for that too, you are executed.  Problem solved!  What, you can’t be executed?  I think all of these things are eminently doable.  Now granted, not in our insane time.  People might make fun of you.

Moses with the Tablets of the Law. Guido Reni. C. 17th . Oil on Canvas.

It seems to me that some of the confusion comes because we mix up what Jesus said with the Law.  Jesus raised the ante, he was changing the paradigm.  He pointed out that the Law didn’t fix anything ultimately.  Hebrews makes the same point over and over.  The sacrifices had to keep coming, because the sin kept coming.  But it wasn’t impossible, and it wasn’t pointless.  What’s impossible is pleasing a Holy God.  But The Old Testament is about grace, which is why he made it doable.  And to this day the people still trying to keep that Law, namely the old Jews, those who rejected their Messiah, along with some Christians who still do what Paul said and treasure the Old Testament, are blessed immensely for it.  They have monitary wealth, mental health, technological advancement, peace of mind, and on and on the tangible benefits go.  We Americans’ are even benefitting from the vestiges of the Old Testament, originally the foundation of our system, which still remain in our common law tradition.  There is also some confusion because of Paul and Romans, but I’m not getting into that.

The Law said murderers should be put to death.  Jesus said that anger in your heart was the same as murder.   And by implication that those people deserve death too.  The Law said if you stole your neighbor’s wife you should be put to death.  Jesus said that lust in your heart is the same as adultery.  And by implication. . .  The Law was doable, pleasing an Infinitely Holy Being, not doable.  The problem is that the Jews thought they were pleasing an Infinitely Holy Being by keeping the Law.  They were hoping to be rewarded, not just in eternity but on this earth.  They thought that their good behavior warranted them being liberated from Rome.  Jesus raised the bar, he wanted to save not just them but the whole world.  And he didn’t just want to save it from political oppression, but to reverse all sin, even sin in the heart.  And so he sent his Holy Spirit to guide us.  So now we have an even more impossible task, and supernatural ability to do it.

I think a lot of the hand wringing over the Old Testament is just a complex excuse for pretending that God doesn’t care about holiness.  We know we should stop staring at our neighbor’s wife, we could stop.  But it’s easier just to throw up our hands and say “God demands perfection, and I just can’t do that”.  It’s easier to pretend that there are two Gods the OT God and the NT God.

It also saves us from actually having to think through the Old Testament.  The provisions of the Law are complicated, because the evil we weave is complicated.  There is no end to the evil of the human heart.  I am reminded of how the Jews turned rules about charity into and excuse for not taking care of their elderly parents.  There are even comments in the Law about possible perversions.  Don’t loan someone something when you know you are going to get it back in a jubilee year.

And then the real difficulty with the Law for our time: it’s so judgey.  Oh God do we really have to punish people who break your rules?  What about all those warm fuzzy grace banners?  Can’t we all just have tolerance?  Wasn’t Jesus a hippie?  Why do you have to be such a downer man?  And that gets to the heart of the Old Testament Law.  It is the community admitting what sin is collectively.  When someone breaks the rules of God, we the ‘congregation’, the people of God, the Church, don’t sweep it under the rug, we deal with it.  And we should be better at dealing with it than the world, according to Paul.  They should marvel at how we deal with it.  Sin is still serious.  That’s why Jesus had to die, it’s that serious.  Ananias and Sapphira just lied about their offering and they were put to death, in the New Testament.  And you can’t even tell someone that leaving theier spouse is unchristian?  The Old and New Testament are one, they express the revelation of one god, The One True God.  The divide is between modern American Evangelical churches and that God.  There is no interetestamental chasm.  There is a huge chasm created by the sin in our hearts.  So knock it off.  Because you can.

Do you ever have someone quote you back something that you told them as if it were their own?  I’m sure we all do it but it but it’s hard to maintain any intellectual respect for someone when they do this often.  It get’s to the purpose of even lose citation.  There are many currents of thoughts, which we are all swept up in, but it is a good practice to be aware of where your ideas are coming from.  Both for the integrity of your own thought as well as so others can follow up.  As Christians we are told to take every thought captive(2 Corinthians 10), and for good reason.  Many of these ideas floating around, are not simply interesting, they are sinister.  He who is not for Jesus is against him Matthew 12:30.  How many of your teachers hate God?  How many movie creators, authors, musicians that you patronize hate God?  To say nothing of architects, artists, and other cultural and political speakers.

Come on, click it.

The same situation which applies personally with individuals also applies to groups, society, and culture at large.  When you hear people repeating mantras of our day or focusing on popular aspects of broad topics, it’s hard to take them seriously.  Especially when they demand to be taken seriously.  Or they insist that they are an intelligent individual thinking for themselves.  But it’s hard to recognize a fad, if that’s all you know.  Like a fish in water may not realize there is a state apart from being in water, until they are taken out of water.  Which is why history is so important, or the reading of old books as C. S. Lewis said.  By seeing how other people in other times thought and acted, it makes the trends in your own time more evident.  Then you can step outside of yourself and see your world as in a snow globe, get some perspective as they say.  And perspective is very helpful.  It is hard do see yourself accurately, we don’t like doing it, because we are sinful.  We like to smooth things over, pretend that our unique flaws are “just how it is”  or that “everyone is doing it”.  Everyone is doing it, that’s the point and that’s the problem.  You can see this with Lot and his wife.  We are appalled at Lot’s treatment of his daughters, but he was so used to it that he hardly noticed.  His wife loved that sinful place because she didn’t know anything else.

Of course this requires respect for ones elders even if they are no longer alive on this Earth.  Not something we are given much to.  We can’t just write off everything that went before us as wrong.  We have to honestly try to understand what it is that they were trying to do.  Often we find that they faced very similar situations, and attempted the same remedies that we try.  It seems like an argument for looking harshly on the men of the past is an argument for more perspective.  If you are justified in judging them harshly, beware of your own flaws that similar men in the future won’t judge you the same way.

And so we can actually learn a lot about someone, without walking a mile in their shoes.  When their actions align like the planets in an Indiana Jones movie, with the culture, we can know where their ideas come from.  We can know what spirit they are of.  When their actions align with Biblical Orthodoxy, even when it’s difficult, we can know what Spirit those people are of as well.  Its hard to conceive of anything more ridiculous than someone standing in front of you demanding you respect them for their individuality as they repeat the day’s CNN headlines or the liberal theologian’s talking points, or even Karl Marx’s complaining.

And so this may be the most telling aspects of our time.  A propensity to dislike all historical figures and a propensity to demand our rights as an individual.  A toxic mix to truth. We don’t like to be seen in terms of any group, especially a cemetery.  We want to be free to remake ourselves however we want, change our gender, change your hair, change your skin with bleach or ink or metal.  Just like everyone else.  The interesting thing is that when you are going the right way.  The only unique posture is to go the wrong way.  And like those women and their cats, only one man is going to St. Ives and the rest are all going to hell in a hand-basket.  The size of the crowd is just a distraction from the facts.  But the fun of the human propensity to rebellion, is that when everyone is going insane, being sane is rebellion.  Not getting the tattoo is now counter cultural.  But strangely this type of rebellion seems to offend people more profoundly than the other.  How dare you judge me, unless you are a fellow handbasket traveller.

So dare to be a rebel, or not.  Take a step back and survey the historical mountain you are on.  Only then can you draw a respectable path for yourself.  But don’t be afraid to respect the wisdom of the past so you don’t repeat their mistakes.  And don’t be afraid to admit that most of you is borrowed or stolen.  And what do you have that you were not given?  Because of the angels.  They are watching, and you look as ridiculous as Chazz Michael Michaels.