Retaking the High Moral Ground

Retaking the High Moral Ground

What are the Critical Requirements for progressives (or if you prefer “collectivists” or “statists”) to hold the high moral ground? The answer is surprisingly simple.

Their real agenda is evil. So they must hide this behind a false facade or turn morals upside down. Either way the powers behind the scenes need to convince the bulk of their followers who are likely to be people who are basically good at heart and either convince or compel the rest of society.

The second trick has been tried from time immemorial. Isaiah 5.20 says “Woe to those who call good evil and evil good” so nothing new there – or once again people have found that “old tricks are the best tricks”

The first – putting a mask of “good” over a reality of evil is the basis of all traps and the game of all would-be dictators. Don't let the quarry see what is really coming – they would run away! Rather make it look attractive. So the cheese in the mousetrap is ever so inviting to that quivering little nose – but the hidden reality is sudden death. The dictator always promises liberty, prosperity and anything else that will entice the people to acclaim him leader. What they receive is so very different! I hope to look at this next time

So two critical requirements of claiming the high moral ground for progressives are turning morals upside down, and deception of their real agenda. Of course the “foot soldiers” of the progressive cause will have been taken in by the first, and totally ignorant of the second!

How have they managed to turn morals upside done in out time?

By replacing absolute moral standards with arbitrary ones.

We have had the enormous blessing of “Judeo-Christian” morality. This is based on the moral character of God – which is absolute and unchanging.

Limited human understanding of His nature, the powerful corrupting tendency of our fallen human nature, and ever changing human circumstances have led to popular morals being sometimes better, sometimes worse. But through all this, the revelation of God's nature supremely in Christ Jesus but also all Scripture; The reasoning of people whose consciences had been touched by God (yes, some of these were pre-Christian Greeks and Romans); And hard won experience over the span of history, have triumphed.

In the late 1960's all this began to change. We rebelled against the wisdom of our parents, we threw off – first in sexual morals – the existing rules. We started to tear down all the societal “fences” which had been laboriously placed to protect us from the forces of temptation, and the wholesale corruption of our system of morals.

Over the past 50 years this awful project has proceeded ever gathering speed.

God has now been pushed out as the rightful basis and standard of morals.

By breaking down all the old taboos, destroying the old rules, destroying even customs of manners and courtesy the hard Left have created an existential angst – no one knows what the rules are any-more – every situation has to be thought out from scratch – every situation is fraught with danger: creating a psychological void. Suddenly we feel we need rules!

But without God, what standard is there for rules: None! “We” have to make arbitrary ones!

Collectivism to the “rescue”! They not only provide the new rules but also the comfort: we are right because we all say we are right. Dissenters and rule breakers must be – and are - mercilessly dealt with. So the new human centered morality is built up, Like all human things its best endeavors will go astray and end up bad. Worse it originates in the hard Left who want to turn our freedom into slavery and our democracy into tyranny. So enough of these new morals will be upside-down in that they are deliberately dysfunctional and destructive. Think “gender fluidity” for a start!

How does one pull the rug from under this false moral high ground?

Keep stressing absolute morals!

Yup, we have been successfully psyched out of doing this, that's one reason they could win. We have to start and keep saying “there is God, so moral rules just are absolute”,

Applied to this crazy “gender fluidity” (it is based on a philosophy – that only the individual concerned can “know” a thing – (eg their gender) - that can only be described as complete lunacy)! We would say No! “God made us male and female” there are only two genders (genetic defects are just that: defects) If you have the correct number of sex chromosomes then you have either XX and you are female or XY and you are male. Your gender was not assigned at birth, it was built in to every cell in your body from conception! You are what you are and by genetic testing not just you, but everyone can “know” what gender you are!

Strategy to Beat Progressives

A Lesson on Strategy

There are some valuable lessons we can learn from secular, indeed military research into strategy. Philosophers (including those speculative philosophers who style themselves “theologians”) can and often do put forth complete rubbish, yet it is difficult to refute them or prove them wrong. However those, like engineers and military leaders who get it wrong are rapidly and often terminally corrected by reality! So their researches tend to be of more practical value for dealing with real world problems.

The first concept is called Centre of Gravity. That is a little confusing nowadays to those of us used to the same term being used in physics, but it originated with a brilliant military writer of the 19^th century called Clausewitz. He was thinking of physics as the analogy for armies of his day, but in modern affairs that analogy breaks down.

The definition of strategic Center of Gravity is: "the source of power that provides moral or physical strength, freedom of action, or will to act." Thus, the center of gravity is usually seen as the "source of strength".



In any conflict situation it is important to discover the adversary's CofG. Generally one takes care not to attack it directly because as the source of their strength it is close to impregnable! For instance in olden days a Cof G might be a fortified castle. Even Robin Hood knew that to attack Sherwood castle directly would be suicidal and used subterfuge to get inside it and rescue Maid Marion.



So consider the Progressive activists. What is their CofG? I think there are two.
1. They hold the moral high ground. (Yes I know, they are not actually more moral, quite the reverse! But by re-defining morals they have convinced themselves and enough others that they are for this to work.)
2. They have been working since the late 1960's to infiltrate key institutions which they now hold as fortified citadels. They control most of the media and Hollywood. They control education from kindergarten to college and university. They have infiltrated and in some cases control churches.



If military wisdom is correct, then a direct attack on any of these will fail. So what can we do?



For a start learn two other military terms: Critical Capability and Critical Requirement.



Critical Capability is something that their CofG empowers them to do. For example in olden days a fortified castle (the CofG) empowered the defenders to repel armed attack. So what do the Progressives CofG's empower them to do?



Holding the high moral ground empowers a self-righteous anger directed at anyone who disagrees with them. Have you noticed how angry progressive activists are, and how they don't debate, they shut down (and shout down) debate and dissent, with violence if necessary.



Holding the media has the Critical Capability that they get to control the narrative. The news people hear, see on TV or read is mostly biased, and pro “conservative” news items are censored.



Holding Hollywood has the Critical Capability that films and TV shows have a consistent political or social engineering bias, and have been used to make the population accept say lesbian sex acts (as seen in just about every 'M' rated show) as normal. Yes, we of the “Free World” who were aghast at the old Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean propaganda machines are now ourselves being gently and enjoyably brainwashed!



Holding education from beginning to end has been a devastating Critical Capability. In my generation, we came out of university varying shades of pink, but once in the real world reality eventually made us see sense



But now we are seeing a generation emerging from university who have been immersed in progressive propaganda throughout their education. They know nothing else. They are uninformed but hardened socialist/statist/collectivists. One sees the effect of this in this year's elections in Britain, where an unashamedly Communist-by-any-other-name leader promised more “bread and circuses” and won such support from young voters that although he had been written off as unelectably crazy, he nearly won!



We are now seeing institutionalized and government mandated sexual child abuse. The logically nonsensical “gender fluidity”, the sexualising of young children, the active promotion of homosexual lifestyle and the purely evil pushing of children into sex change operations is child sexual abuse of a scale and heinousness possibly never before seen. This is ruining lives for the sake of promoting a statist political agenda. (If you are not aware of this teaching in schools right around the Western world I strongly recommend this talk on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbBJPq72Q14



The other therm to learn is Critical Requirement, this consists of the thing or things necessary to support the CofG. In olden days a fortified city was a CofG for the population. An invading army if they were not in a hurry did not attack this Cof G, they just surrounded the city and starved them out. So “food and water” were critical requirements of that Cof G.



In the largest US land battle of all time – the “Battle of the Bulge” in Dec 1944 to Jan 1945, at least in the film version (and maybe in reality!) this was used to effect. Hitler was making one last desperate attack. One of his CofG's was his Panza divisions. I gather the German tanks were better armored and had heavier guns that the light but maneuverable American ones. To take them head on would be suicidal. But what is a critical requirement of a tank? Fuel. The American tanks played cat and mouse with the Panza's until the German fuel supplies were exhausted!



In general the best solution is to find the Critical Requirements of the Cof G and attack or remove those.



So …. what are the critical requirements for holding the high moral ground, holding much of the media and Hollywood, holding many churches, and holding education?

To Forgive or not to Forgive ...

I'm interrupting our series on saving the West to give my thoughts on this issue that affects us all from time to time.

To Forgive or not to Forgive

It is in the Lord's Prayer … “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”. It is the subject of one of Jesus' most blunt parables: the Unforgiving Servant - which ends with the terrible warning “and this is how my Father will treat each one of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”. It is stated in Hebrews “vengeance is mine says the Lord, I will repay”. Joseph says when his brothers fear that he will exact his (justifiable) revenge: “Am I in the place of God that I should do such a thing?”. It is a theme so consistent throughout Scripture that there can be no argument about the fact of it. So why can't so many Christians forgive?

My guess is this: temptation and our unregenerate nature.

Thirst for revenge seems part of our human nature. So too are most vices, but revenge is, up to a point, socially acceptable – encouraged even. Of course people taking the law into their own hands is frowned upon, and is likely to land the perpetrator of the revenge in court. But “getting even” without doing anything illegal gets a social thumbs up, and is inculcated by stories and movies. One Biblical account of bad behaviour is Lamech – who boasted that if Cain were to be avenged seven times, he would be avenged seventy seven times! An example of better behaviour is David who praised Abigail because her swift action in bringing tribute to him prevented David from sinning against the Lord by taking revenge on Nabal for refusing it.

Thus we should expect it to always be difficult to “go against the grain” of our human nature.

Second, since the Bible depicts unforgiveness to be such a serious sin, we should expect to be seriously attacked by a temptation to wallow in it. Being forgiving is part of God's very nature. We didn't just learn this in some academic way, we have been the actual beneficiaries of it: in Christ he forgave us all our sins! So in forgiving others we are being imitators of him as dearly loved children. And we are empowered to act by being recipients of undeserved forgiveness. Conversely, harbouring unforgiveness is a form of hating God's divine character. That surely cuts us off from him.

Now when we remember how insidious temptations to other sins can be, we should expect to have to face all the wiles and stratagems of the devil in this area.

One has only to read the Genesis account of Adam and Eve being tempted to see that level of cunning: gradually drawing their attention to the tree and its fruit, suggesting subliminally its desirability, and their “right” to fuller knowledge, subtly instilling doubts about God's very clear command!

So we should expect that demonic voice to be ever so kind and consoling towards us – always reminding us how much we have been hurt – trapping us in going over and over our suffering – until the hurt becomes like an old friend and no matter how great the mental anguish, we cannot let go of it. This magnifies the harm originally done to us, and prevents God healing these hurts. It gives the devil two wins with one “stone'. We, a human God loves is caused more pain, and also our animal desire for revenge grows stronger and stronger weakening our resistance to temptation. Then we can be led to doubt that it is really a sin to be unforgiving “Did God really say … ?” If we succumb then whether we go the final step to exacting revenge, or just sit under a demonic stronghold nursing our hurt, victim-hood, and supposed righteousness, the devil will have won – he will have driven a wedge between us and Christ our Saviour.

Are there any “strengthening exercises” that can help us not to fall into this temptation?

I think there are two attitudes of mind, that if practised and reinforced, will protect us – Just as Joseph was protected “Am I in the place of God?” and as Jesus, Stephen and so many martyrs and confessors since then have been enabled to pray: “Father forgive them ...”.

The first is to continually rejoice in the new world of grace into which we have been re-born.

We were His enemies by our choice and our deeds. Yet he died to blot out our sins. If that were not enough he – Almighty God - humbled himself to beg us to repent and turn back to him. But there's more: He sent His Spirit into our innermost being, and – short of compelling us – He did everything necessary for us to repent. More still: had we just been forgiven, enabled to love Him, and given a servant's place in his household, we would have been fabulously well treated. But on top of it all He called us His sons and daughters!

In the face of all this what are the “light and momentary troubles of this world” compared to the glory we share and which we are to enjoy in all its fullness forever? (Amazingly God showers favour after favour upon us, and so, yes, He does care about even the little things of this life as well – but not when they will blight our eternal joy!)

If we delight our minds on these things. If we are forever praising God for the infinite goodness He has shown us. If we are striving to imitate His moral character in this world so that we can enjoy being with him forever. We will be building the spiritual and mental muscle necessary to forgive even when we are really badly wronged.

The second mental exercise is a human commercial analogy. Some years ago our local video rental store went out of business. Some time later we (with many others I guess) got a letter from a collection agency. It said it had “bought” all the video store's debts. And going through the books they found we had owed the video store some unpaid late fines. They now demanded we pay these to them – or else! Of course having sold their bad debts to the collection agency the owners of the store could not try to collect these debts themselves - they now belonged to someone else!

Let's play a mental game. The Bible talks about us dying to our old life and being born again into a new life in Christ. Let's pretend we are the spiritual equivalent of that video store going out of business. Jesus is like the debt collectors who bought the bad debts. He took away our sins on the cross: he also bought all the sins done against us. He owns them now. He is the only one who has the right to collect them. We can't.

He can “collect” on them, or forgive them – that's frankly none of our business! We sold them. They're gone. In this analogy “forgiving” is just us reminding ourselves of this fact!

An FAQ is: Do those who wronged us have to repent, or say they are sorry before we forgive them? Absolutely not! Certainly it would be better for them if they made amends – Jesus told us so. But that is between Him as the new owner of the “sin-against-us”, and them. We have to forgive from the heart regardless and to keep reminding ourselves that we have done so simply because their “sin-against-us” no longer belongs to us but to Him.

Cosmological View of the Failing West Pt. 2

Cosmological View of the Failing West Pt. 2

The second part of Christian cosmology involves the interaction between God and people. I might not have previously stressed that God is a personal living being – as opposed to an impersonal “force” or even some anthropomorphised “Nature”. Although this is amply evidenced by the Son becoming incarnate as a real born-of-a-woman human being. Also the relationships between God and humans is a major theme throughout the entire Bible, and important to our discussion on the fate of the West.

The “problem” of pain in the world (Nature red in tooth and claw) and of human evil deeds is often thrown up as a naive argument against the existence of God. Surprisingly, professed Christians are often similarly naive and do not seem to recognise how simply it is answered from basic Christian cosmology!

First the “red in tooth and claw”. If you accept, as I do, that science explores the question “how” and religious faith the question “why”, then these are like lines on non intersecting planes: you can accept or reject the prevailing scientific model without gain or loss to your faith.

So I can happily go along with the current theory of evolution (and drop it when a better one emerges). In this case the theory is that the current natural order has evolved by survival of the fittest, or to put it bluntly because the whole system works. Yes there is a food chain, bigger animals eat littler ones. Each species up the food chain breeds up to the point of starvation which confines fluctuations in numbers up and down the food chain (and to plants as well) thus maintaining a rough balance. Atheists readily accept this as a necessary mechanism for evolution but baulk at God using it. Why? Why cannot God be pragmatic and use the only system short of “hands-on control” that would result in the world as we see it?

The second is human evil. Once again the “problem” disappears in a real Biblical cosmology. As I pointed out earlier, God is entirely good. There also exists a rebel spiritual being and its cohorts that are evil. But God is infinitely more powerful than the evil spirit “Satan”. Human beings chose to allow themselves to be beguiled by the devil into disobedience to God.

Again the “problem” only arises in humans who think they can second guess God – a rather arrogant attitude! God's solution to the fact of human disobedience and His desire to save as many humans as possible was this: Namely to by-and-large let history run its course, but at a specific time in history for the Son to enter the world as a divine-yet-human being, suffer, die, and rise from the dead and at a future point in history known only to Him to end this world order and take those who have turned back to him into a new and perfect creation.

While this world lasts, humans have the opportunity to chose obedience to God. They also have the “freedom” to chose evil. Thus there is evil in the world by human choice and by the permissive will of God in order to save all those who use this opportunity to choose obedience to Him.

Christian cosmology here absolutely trumps any atheist one in explaining evil.

Now as anyone who has travelled any distance on the Christian pilgrimage knows, even those who have chosen God have to continuously chose to obey God rather than the promptings of our animal nature and the whisperings of the devil. Even we easily lapse into being participants in the devil's plans for destroying humanity. So we mean no disrespect when we say that for the rest, even their best intentions serve the devil's purposes.

Another dimension altogether is prayer. In Christian (not folk religion's!) cosmology, there is a relationship between God and believer that can be likened to that of perfect parent to children. So prayer is an important part of this relationship as speech is in parent-to-child. One aspect of this is appeal for help or provision. Believers appeal to God as to a perfectly loving Father. There are things God will do in response to such appeal. Similarly there are things God will never do regardless of the fervency of such appeals! Importantly for the West, a decline in Christian believers has the consequence that less protection and good things are being wrought by God in response to prayer.

A final dimension is the actions of good people in response to God's call. It is quirky but true that God does not confine Himself to working through people who believe in Him to achieve Hid purposes. Nevertheless Believers are granted their part in participating with God in working for the good of the world. Just as children often get to “help” mum and dad in doing things.

Thus the reduced numbers of Christians, and even among churchgoers the reduced knowledge of God and reduced participation in His works means God is less active in protecting what is good and fighting the ingress of evil that previously.

This explains the vicious cycle of rising secularism and failing or secularised Christianity.