0 comment Sunday, May 11, 2014 | admin
Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.
The phrase above strikes me as being especially poignant these days.
This quote is from the Bible. Notice that the writer does not say "isn't this diversity wonderful? Diversity is our strength!''
And note that the book in which this phrase appears, in Chapter 5, verse 2, is the Book of Lamentations.
Lamentations.
What is the opposite of 'to lament'? According to an online thesaurus, the antonym is ''to celebrate.''
So why isn't the writer ''celebrating diversity''? Why is he lamenting it instead, and crying to God about it?
Is he a xenophobe? Perhaps a hater and a nativist and a bigot? A racist, perhaps? Mean-spirited?
Actually it's believed that the prophet Jeremiah, a man of God, wrote Lamentations, so I guess we had better not accuse him of being on the wrong side morally.
Still, this is exactly what many Christians of today are doing, indirectly, when they not only judge, but condemn those of us who lament our country, our inheritance, being turned to strangers, and our houses to aliens.
Is it in accordance with Biblical teachings for us to erase national boundaries in the name of 'social justice' or 'the brotherhood of man'? Some modern Christians insist that it is; in fact, they imply that we are actually commanded to sacrifice our countries and our birthright, in addition to our money, to accommodate anyone and everyone of the millions who want to come to our countries.
But where is the Biblical support for this radical egalitarian idea? Why is such an idea not spelled out explicitly in the Bible or in the writings of the Church fathers? Are universalist Christians ready to claim that the past generations had it all wrong? It would appear so.
Should it not give us pause to find ourselves outside the consensus of Christian interpretation over the last 20 centuries? It should. If we in our day have come up with some radically new 'understanding' we should think twice, three times, and more, about overthrowing all the past interpretations of the Bible.
Modern-day 'one-world' Christians usually imply that those who believe in the old ways of seeing things -- that is, in the existence of separate nations with boundaries -- are not only wrong, but guilty of the sin of 'hate' . If that is true, and if the sin of hate or 'xenophobia' is as serious as the universalists believe, then all our ancestors are now under damnation because they believed in separate nations and maintaining boundaries.
I'm not prepared to condemn my forefathers to hell, and I am appalled that so many of my fellow Christians are doing just that.
Our forefathers, bless them, believed in passages like this one:
''When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people...''
The Most High divided peoples, and set the bounds which separated them.
Our nations are our homes. The Bible very much supports the idea of property; the Ten Commandments warn us about coveting others' goods and wives, and warn us against stealing, which implies that property and ownership are part of God's order.
Nations are part of the inheritance, the property our fathers pass on to us.
The passage from Lamentations alludes to that fact.
How, then, can tens of millions of immigrants stake a claim to others' countries, their rightful inheritance?
Accepting small numbers of immigrants, who seek admission lawfully and in an orderly way (as the Bible enjoins to follow the laws of the land) is one thing. Allowing tens of millions of uninvited 'guests', or invaders, to put it more bluntly, is another matter entirely. Small numbers of people can be absorbed into a society with a minimum of disruption and distress for all involved. Millions, tens of millions, as we have now, create chaos, disruption, and conflict. Change happens quickly, without the consent of the existing inhabitants. People are displaced from jobs and homes. Quality of life deteriorates as large numbers of people barge into an area in a short time. Financial crises occur as the local area has to provide for the masses of newcomers.
Is this hard to understand? Even a twelve-year-old is capable of understanding the situation. But why are those of liberal views so stubbornly obtuse when it comes to this issue?
Surely, even those slow of understanding can see that immigrants are assimilable only in smaller numbers. Mass immigration makes such absorption impossible. Or is this what liberals like about it? Liberals think it an injustice, a manifestation of ''racism'', to ask that newcomers assimilate and adapt to us. I sense a certain amount of hostility on the part of said liberals to the existing order. I sense that there is a desire to see chaos, and destruction of the America as we have known it, in order to make way for some imaginary New Age of Social Justice and Equality.
Is this a Christian attitude? I say that it is not. Biblically there is no justification for the idea that human beings can ever create an ideal society, and it is hubris to believe that we can, especially when all past attempts to create some kind of egalitarian paradise have ended badly, often with bloodshed.
One more point, which is simple common sense.
When a society is as badly out-of-balance as ours is, it is necessary to make a sharp correction. Easy-does-it won't suffice when we are about to careen off a cliff.
Liberals seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge that our society is ailing not because it is run by 'right-wingers' but because it has gone way over the top with liberal ideas, which have all proven unworkable or destructive. We have been doing things the liberal way, working toward liberal goals, for the last half century and more. We now have out-of-control mass immigration which is changing the face of our country. We face becoming strangers in our own country, outnumbered by people who, at best, care nothing for us, and at worst, hate us and would do us harm if they could. Is this a happy prospect? It is not. But it's happening; check the census projections, and think about being reduced to an outsider in your own country, or about the prospects of our children in such a country.
And there is no way that this dire situation (which does exist, despite the massive denial of many) can be blamed on 'right-wingers' or 'xenophobes' or 'racists.' No, our country has gone quite over the edge in the opposite direction, in attempting to root out 'racism' and to cater to minorities, including people who are not native to our country. We now have draconian speech codes called 'political correctness' which stifle all honest discussion. Those who purport to feel shocked by what I have written here, if they are truly shocked, are so only because they have been protected by PC from hearing real honest discussion and both sides of the issue.
If this truly were a racist and xenophobic country, we native-born Americans would not be on the ropes in our own country. As it is, we are at a disadvantage; if we were so 'bigoted' and xenophobic, we would not be so careless about letting millions of unauthorized people enter our country and make demands of us, would we? If we are 'racists' and 'xenophobes' we must be awfully ineffectual ones, since we have so many strangers and aliens among us.
No, it isn't 'right-wingers' who are to blame for the mess that is our country: it is largely the result of perhaps well-intentioned but foolish people who want to sacrifice their country as a form of reparations to the Third World. We have gone too far to the left; we need to return to the kind of country we once were, when life was much more sane and safe and peaceful.
Our current state of affairs is not working. The patient is sick and getting sicker, and the remedies are harming rather than helping. We need a change of course, a change of doctors, and a different course of treatment, and there is no time to lose.
So if I speak bluntly here, if I say things that seem 'harsh' and unloving, it's only because America needs some 'tough love.' We have no time for tiptoeing around. We've had 40 years or so of wandering in the liberal wilderness, and let's admit it: we are lost. We have to retrace our steps and go back the way we came.
We've had half a century of coerced 'niceness' and saccharine altruism. Now it's time for a correction, and that may require that we stop mincing our words, and stop the lies and the flatteries and the self-deception.
Sometimes you have to throw cold water on someone to wake him up and bring him to his senses. Our country is in need of being doused with the icy water of truth.
Right now, at this point in our history, it's time to be loving towards our own, towards our children, grandchildren, our progeny, our stake in the future. Our first loyalty is to them, and to our living kin and neighbors. Our responsibility is to them, and we are failing them in an effort to show how unbiased and inclusive we are. We are harming ourselves and our own in the name of helping the whole world.
Is there not one honest liberal who can acknowledge that it's time to correct this imbalance, and look to ourselves and those nearest to us?
I will conclude with some appropriate quotes from Christian and secular sources.
"Since you cannot give aid to everyone, one has to be concerned with those who by reason of blood, time or
circumstances are by some chance more tightly bound to you" - St, Augustine, De Doctrina
"Just as there are in a military camp separate lines for each platoon and section, men are placed on the earth so that each nation may be content with its own boundaries. [In this manner,] God, by his providence, reduces to order that which is confused." - John Calvin
"We begin our public affections in our families... we pass on to our neighbourhoods.''
[...]
"To love the little platoon we belong to in society is the first principle of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind.'' - Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
"For Western civilization in the present condition of the world, the most important practical consequence of the guilt encysted in the liberal ideology and psyche is this: that the liberal, and the group, nation or civilization infected by liberal doctrine and values, are morally disarmed before those whom the liberal regards as less well off than himself." -- James Burnham, 1964.
"Nationhood is not an arbitrary human arrangement, but a principle of divine order. The separation of vastly different peoples helps reduce conflict and promote fruitful diversity. Massive uncontrolled immigration defeats God�s order. Love and compassion fare poorly in chaos - and also in the tyranny that follows chaos." - John Vinson
The phrase above strikes me as being especially poignant these days.
This quote is from the Bible. Notice that the writer does not say "isn't this diversity wonderful? Diversity is our strength!''
And note that the book in which this phrase appears, in Chapter 5, verse 2, is the Book of Lamentations.
Lamentations.
What is the opposite of 'to lament'? According to an online thesaurus, the antonym is ''to celebrate.''
So why isn't the writer ''celebrating diversity''? Why is he lamenting it instead, and crying to God about it?
Is he a xenophobe? Perhaps a hater and a nativist and a bigot? A racist, perhaps? Mean-spirited?
Actually it's believed that the prophet Jeremiah, a man of God, wrote Lamentations, so I guess we had better not accuse him of being on the wrong side morally.
Still, this is exactly what many Christians of today are doing, indirectly, when they not only judge, but condemn those of us who lament our country, our inheritance, being turned to strangers, and our houses to aliens.
Is it in accordance with Biblical teachings for us to erase national boundaries in the name of 'social justice' or 'the brotherhood of man'? Some modern Christians insist that it is; in fact, they imply that we are actually commanded to sacrifice our countries and our birthright, in addition to our money, to accommodate anyone and everyone of the millions who want to come to our countries.
But where is the Biblical support for this radical egalitarian idea? Why is such an idea not spelled out explicitly in the Bible or in the writings of the Church fathers? Are universalist Christians ready to claim that the past generations had it all wrong? It would appear so.
Should it not give us pause to find ourselves outside the consensus of Christian interpretation over the last 20 centuries? It should. If we in our day have come up with some radically new 'understanding' we should think twice, three times, and more, about overthrowing all the past interpretations of the Bible.
Modern-day 'one-world' Christians usually imply that those who believe in the old ways of seeing things -- that is, in the existence of separate nations with boundaries -- are not only wrong, but guilty of the sin of 'hate' . If that is true, and if the sin of hate or 'xenophobia' is as serious as the universalists believe, then all our ancestors are now under damnation because they believed in separate nations and maintaining boundaries.
I'm not prepared to condemn my forefathers to hell, and I am appalled that so many of my fellow Christians are doing just that.
Our forefathers, bless them, believed in passages like this one:
''When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people...''
The Most High divided peoples, and set the bounds which separated them.
Our nations are our homes. The Bible very much supports the idea of property; the Ten Commandments warn us about coveting others' goods and wives, and warn us against stealing, which implies that property and ownership are part of God's order.
Nations are part of the inheritance, the property our fathers pass on to us.
The passage from Lamentations alludes to that fact.
How, then, can tens of millions of immigrants stake a claim to others' countries, their rightful inheritance?
Accepting small numbers of immigrants, who seek admission lawfully and in an orderly way (as the Bible enjoins to follow the laws of the land) is one thing. Allowing tens of millions of uninvited 'guests', or invaders, to put it more bluntly, is another matter entirely. Small numbers of people can be absorbed into a society with a minimum of disruption and distress for all involved. Millions, tens of millions, as we have now, create chaos, disruption, and conflict. Change happens quickly, without the consent of the existing inhabitants. People are displaced from jobs and homes. Quality of life deteriorates as large numbers of people barge into an area in a short time. Financial crises occur as the local area has to provide for the masses of newcomers.
Is this hard to understand? Even a twelve-year-old is capable of understanding the situation. But why are those of liberal views so stubbornly obtuse when it comes to this issue?
Surely, even those slow of understanding can see that immigrants are assimilable only in smaller numbers. Mass immigration makes such absorption impossible. Or is this what liberals like about it? Liberals think it an injustice, a manifestation of ''racism'', to ask that newcomers assimilate and adapt to us. I sense a certain amount of hostility on the part of said liberals to the existing order. I sense that there is a desire to see chaos, and destruction of the America as we have known it, in order to make way for some imaginary New Age of Social Justice and Equality.
Is this a Christian attitude? I say that it is not. Biblically there is no justification for the idea that human beings can ever create an ideal society, and it is hubris to believe that we can, especially when all past attempts to create some kind of egalitarian paradise have ended badly, often with bloodshed.
One more point, which is simple common sense.
When a society is as badly out-of-balance as ours is, it is necessary to make a sharp correction. Easy-does-it won't suffice when we are about to careen off a cliff.
Liberals seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge that our society is ailing not because it is run by 'right-wingers' but because it has gone way over the top with liberal ideas, which have all proven unworkable or destructive. We have been doing things the liberal way, working toward liberal goals, for the last half century and more. We now have out-of-control mass immigration which is changing the face of our country. We face becoming strangers in our own country, outnumbered by people who, at best, care nothing for us, and at worst, hate us and would do us harm if they could. Is this a happy prospect? It is not. But it's happening; check the census projections, and think about being reduced to an outsider in your own country, or about the prospects of our children in such a country.
And there is no way that this dire situation (which does exist, despite the massive denial of many) can be blamed on 'right-wingers' or 'xenophobes' or 'racists.' No, our country has gone quite over the edge in the opposite direction, in attempting to root out 'racism' and to cater to minorities, including people who are not native to our country. We now have draconian speech codes called 'political correctness' which stifle all honest discussion. Those who purport to feel shocked by what I have written here, if they are truly shocked, are so only because they have been protected by PC from hearing real honest discussion and both sides of the issue.
If this truly were a racist and xenophobic country, we native-born Americans would not be on the ropes in our own country. As it is, we are at a disadvantage; if we were so 'bigoted' and xenophobic, we would not be so careless about letting millions of unauthorized people enter our country and make demands of us, would we? If we are 'racists' and 'xenophobes' we must be awfully ineffectual ones, since we have so many strangers and aliens among us.
No, it isn't 'right-wingers' who are to blame for the mess that is our country: it is largely the result of perhaps well-intentioned but foolish people who want to sacrifice their country as a form of reparations to the Third World. We have gone too far to the left; we need to return to the kind of country we once were, when life was much more sane and safe and peaceful.
Our current state of affairs is not working. The patient is sick and getting sicker, and the remedies are harming rather than helping. We need a change of course, a change of doctors, and a different course of treatment, and there is no time to lose.
So if I speak bluntly here, if I say things that seem 'harsh' and unloving, it's only because America needs some 'tough love.' We have no time for tiptoeing around. We've had 40 years or so of wandering in the liberal wilderness, and let's admit it: we are lost. We have to retrace our steps and go back the way we came.
We've had half a century of coerced 'niceness' and saccharine altruism. Now it's time for a correction, and that may require that we stop mincing our words, and stop the lies and the flatteries and the self-deception.
Sometimes you have to throw cold water on someone to wake him up and bring him to his senses. Our country is in need of being doused with the icy water of truth.
Right now, at this point in our history, it's time to be loving towards our own, towards our children, grandchildren, our progeny, our stake in the future. Our first loyalty is to them, and to our living kin and neighbors. Our responsibility is to them, and we are failing them in an effort to show how unbiased and inclusive we are. We are harming ourselves and our own in the name of helping the whole world.
Is there not one honest liberal who can acknowledge that it's time to correct this imbalance, and look to ourselves and those nearest to us?
I will conclude with some appropriate quotes from Christian and secular sources.
"Since you cannot give aid to everyone, one has to be concerned with those who by reason of blood, time or
circumstances are by some chance more tightly bound to you" - St, Augustine, De Doctrina
"Just as there are in a military camp separate lines for each platoon and section, men are placed on the earth so that each nation may be content with its own boundaries. [In this manner,] God, by his providence, reduces to order that which is confused." - John Calvin
"We begin our public affections in our families... we pass on to our neighbourhoods.''
[...]
"To love the little platoon we belong to in society is the first principle of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind.'' - Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
"For Western civilization in the present condition of the world, the most important practical consequence of the guilt encysted in the liberal ideology and psyche is this: that the liberal, and the group, nation or civilization infected by liberal doctrine and values, are morally disarmed before those whom the liberal regards as less well off than himself." -- James Burnham, 1964.
"Nationhood is not an arbitrary human arrangement, but a principle of divine order. The separation of vastly different peoples helps reduce conflict and promote fruitful diversity. Massive uncontrolled immigration defeats God�s order. Love and compassion fare poorly in chaos - and also in the tyranny that follows chaos." - John Vinson
Labels: Christianity, Liberalism, Mass Immigration, Political Correctness, Xenophilia, Xenophobia