This video will introduce you to Christian Concern which exists ‘to protect the freedom to live and speak for him, and to empower Christians to be compassionate and courageous ambassadors.’ Please make it a habit to visit their web site often and to remember them in prayer as they seek to serve the Lord.
Bible
Could this occur in your country? Just take a moment and think about what many politicians and bureaucrats truly think about Christianity. Now, you just might begin to imagine how this could happen to you!
‘According to Statistics Norway, 54, 592 children received care measures from child welfare services in Norway in 2019 alone. That represents nearly 3% of the children in Norway. Nearly 20% of those involved Norwegian-born children to immigrant parents. These statistics represent real families and real-life trauma for everyone involved.
In the fall of 2015, the five children of Ruth and Marius Bodnariu became part of these statistics when they were separated from their parents, their friends and school, and from each other into 3 different households, hours apart from each other. In fact, in many ways, the Bodnarius have become the very symbol of Norway’s staggering child welfare statistics.
This week, five years on from the horrible events of 2015/2016, which included being separated from their children and being forced to leave family, careers, friends and their home, the European Court of Human Rights has dismissed their challenge after four years of international litigation on the basis that the family had not availed themselves of possible domestic remedies for damages after the family was reunited and fled to Romania.
The decision is a blow to the family, who argued before the European Court of Human Rights that any further remedies in Norway were illusory at best. They would not risk further punishment and separation of the family by going back into the system that had so ill-treated them, especially after all of the international media attention the case had garnered. Asking them to go back into the proverbial lion’s den would have been cruel, and something Ruth and Marius Bodnariu would never put their children through.
The Bodnariu family
On paper, Ruth and Marius Bodnariu did everything right, making the ordeal they suffered all the more shocking.
By all accounts, Ruth and Marius are impressive people. Marius, who is of Romanian heritage, has an Engineering Degree in Applied Informatics with a Master’s Degree in Computer Networks. Ruth is a Pediatric Nurse specialising in Psychology for children and youth. They are educated, loving and responsible parents who, in 2015, had two daughters and three sons, the youngest being just three months old and still breast feeding.
From early in their marriage, Marius and Ruth decided that their “ultimate career” was to be parents and raise a family; to have children and invest in them. In 2005, when Ruth was pregnant with their first child, the couple left Romania to start a new life on a farm in Redal, on the west coast of Norway. Redal and its surrounding villages together consist of 200 families, and collectively form a distinct cultural region of Norway.
Shortly after their first child was born in 2006, Marius began working in Forde’s City Hall. Within one year he was put in charge of the IT department in all ten of the village schools. Following expansion, he became responsible for the entire school district covering 10 communities and 50 schools. In 2007, Ruth commenced employment in the paediatric ward of Forde Central Hospital.
Marius and Ruth raised their children in a loving, active and engaging environment. They involved their children in a wide range of activities including fishing, taking care of animals, woodworking, drawing, painting, and music.
Character and fitness
The Bodnarius were an incredibly tight knit family. Ruth’s parents lived in a neighbouring house and were very much a part of the children’s lives. All of the people interviewed by child welfare officials and the police, including colleagues, neighbours and the extended family had nothing but praise for the family.
Of the 122 medical visits the children collectively underwent from their birth until their being taken into custody, not once was there ever an inference that the children were anything but deeply loved and cared for. Nor did tests following the children’s being taken into care provide any evidence of abuse.
Child welfare services intervene
On 30 September 2015, the headteacher at the school where several of the Bodnariu children attended sent a letter to the Department of Culture which contained the written notes of two conversations had by the school with Ruth and Marius’ daughters. The notes reflected that the girls mentioned receiving occasional spankings at home. This letter was forwarded by the Department of Culture to the Barnevernet (Child Welfare Services) on 8 October. After receiving the letter, the Barnevernet contacted the school headteacher to request a detailed report of the complaint. The headteacher highlighted the family’s strong Christian beliefs and suggested that this may retard the children’s development.
Nevertheless, the headteacher believed Ruth and Marius to be good and loving parents. So much so, that when Child Welfare Services attempted to take the Bodnarius’ two daughters from the school yard, she refused them entry onto the school property and would not identify who the children were.
Guilty until proven innocent
Nonetheless, the children were taken that day without prior notification of the family and questioned without any family member, legal representative or anyone they at least could trust being present on the parent’s behalf. The children, just wanting to go home, gave their interrogators the information they thought they wanted to hear. This pattern continued. During a police interrogation, one of the children even asked in her frustration what else did they want her to make up.
As a result of the interviews, the children, including their youngest who was still being breastfed, were taken from them. Norwegian officials continued to repeat the mantra that the children must be believed, even when much of what was said was contradictory or demonstrably false.
In the investigation notes obtained by the family at trial during discovery, the lead investigator even expresses her own doubts that the children are making up the allegations but then suggests that they must nonetheless be true because a Christian upbringing is inherently violent.
Religious illiteracy and cultural intolerance
The Bodnarius’ casefile is replete with evidence of animus and negative pre-conceptions towards the family. One social worker report goes so far as to describe how Mr Bodnariu was praying at a supervised meeting with his son, and made the exclamation: “After a while he (the father) puts himself on his knees and his body (upper part) over the sofa, he might pray!” The children were also never taken to church once while in foster care. They were forbidden from speaking Romanian with each other, and Marius was required to sign a protocol agreeing not to speak Romanian with the children as a condition of being able to have supervised visits with the family.
Reunification
After seven months of separation, the family was finally reunited following court cases in Norway. For their own safety, and fearing further action by Norwegian officials because of the family’s growing grassroots popularity in Norway and internationally, the family fled their home in Norway to relocate in Romania.
The family, working with international lawyer Paul Susman, who coordinated the legal efforts of the case from its beginnings, contacted the Christian Legal Centre for assistance with proceedings at the European Court of Human Rights. Together, over the course of the last four years, we took up their cause before the highest human rights court in Europe. So strong was the international support for the family that the governments of Slovakia, Romania and the Czech Republic all intervened in the case on the family’s behalf.
Always faithful
Throughout this entire ordeal the family has remained true to their faith and to each other. Theirs was a case worth fighting. The Bodnarius, in all of their humility, are clear that they took this case forward for the goal of helping other families in Norway going through the same thing.
For my part, I can only say what an honour it was to represent and to get to know this amazing family. My prayer is that this case and all the attention it has attracted, having happened on the grandest legal stage of them all, will finally motivate Norway to take the necessary measures to prevent similar nightmares happening to other families. The time for change is now.’https://christianconcern.com/news/a-familys-four-year-european-legal-challenge-ends/
Genesis 1:1-2 “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
‘In the fourth century BC, the Greek philosopher Democritus proposed that matter was made of small particles. He assumed that, if you kept cutting material up, you would eventually get to a particle which was uncuttable – the smallest possible particle. The Greek for uncuttable is atomos – hence, the idea of atoms was born.
In the 19th Century, scientists began to suspect that atoms were made of smaller particles. In 1913, Niels Bohr proposed his atomic model of tiny electrons orbiting a nucleus comprised of larger particles called protons and neutrons – collectively known as hadrons.
In the 1960s, scientists began to suspect that hadrons were composed of smaller particles. These particles became known as quarks. Instead of positive and negative bipolar charges, quarks have three-way attractions, which are labeled as color charges of red, blue, and green, even though these colors are not real. Bombardment of hadrons by electrons has caused electrons to be deflected in a manner which suggests the existence of quarks.
All of this seemed to help us understand the nature of matter at the tiny quantum level. But now, some physicists are suggesting that the effect previously ascribed to quarks may just be the observed consequences of quantum weak interactions. In other words, quarks may not even exist.
Whatever resolution physicists find to these strange phenomena, it is certainly the case that these strange designs are consistent with the fact that God created every detail of this wonderful universe, from the smallest to the largest objects.’https://creationmoments.com/sermons/quirks-and-quarks/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=quirks-and-quarks&mc_cid=50193ad5a3&mc_eid=00c1dcff3c
Reading what men of other persuasions have to say is interesting. I recently came across a web site where Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) men write articles on just about anything and everything or so it seems.
One article that caught my attention had to do with the 2020 Presidential election. As I read the article I agreed and disagreed. However, before we get to the article allow me to put forth some Scripture which I believe have some bearing on the subject.
Matthew 14:1-4 At that time Herod the tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus, 2 And said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead; and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him. 3 For Herod had laid hold on John, and bound him, and put him in prison for Herodias’ sake, his brother Philip’s wife. 4 For John said unto him, It is not lawful for thee to have her. John Baptist was a fearless preacher and that landed him in jail and eventually losing his head, literally.
Acts 5:27-29 And when they had brought them, they set them before the council: and the high priest asked them,
28 Saying, Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us. 29 Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men. This was a religious council.
Romans 13:1-5 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. 2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: 4 For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. 5 Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.
1Timothy 2:1-4 I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; 2 For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. 3 For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; 4 Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.
1Peter 2:13-17 Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; 14 Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. 15 For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: 16 As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.
17 Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.
God and His Word are never wrong. So, in consideration of Scripture what are we to do with a situation like the one the USA is in today? It is a fact and blatantly obvious that there was deceit, devilishness and dishonesty in many of the states during this election. It must also be considered that in the USA there continues to be the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Now, the choice between the two running for President is very clear at least should be for a Believer. One example is that Biden is pro-abortion and has many other leftist/Marxist agendas! President Trump isn’t perfect BUT his record shows he is for the unborn and has America’s good at heart!
I guess, when January 3rd comes if Biden is inaugurated as President then we will have to live with it but he became President by dishonesty and a true Believer MUST recognize that as a FACT! Here’s the article and let me know what you think.
‘Our venerable Electoral College votes today in their respective states. Diehards still see options, probably extending to Inauguration Day and beyond. Let them exercise their first amendment rights loudly but peacefully, but Joe Biden won. Donald Trump lost…and lost…and lost…and lost.‘ Trump only lost because of the cheating and dishonesty!
‘One need not agree with any of Biden’s positions, policies, appointments, or nominees but Christians do need to pray for political leaders – a clear biblical mandate, not an optional suggestion. The sooner prayers begin, the better.’ Yes, [pray for God to over-rule the plans of this man. There are too many things to point out here but do a little search and you will see how dishonest Biden has been in his political career.
‘And join me in continuing in prayer for President Trump for the next few weeks until January 20th when he leaves the White House and becomes an unelected private citizen like me.’ President Trump will always be my President knowing that he was CHEATED in the 2020 election.
‘Southern Baptists might not be in the inner circle of the new administration but we’ve got free access to God’s throne. Believers of all kinds in all places have had that and our troubled segment of Christendom could use a little leadership right about now.’https://sbcvoices.com/time-to-come-together-and-pray-for-president-elect-biden/
Praise God that He hears all men who are repentant and come to Him by faith!
2Chronicles 33:11-13 Wherefore the LORD brought upon them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon. 12 And when he was in affliction, he besought the LORD his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, 13 And prayed unto him: and he was intreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD he was God.
‘I grew up in Sri Lanka during a time of civil war. Anyone who criticised the Sinhalese-dominated government disappeared. And anyone who criticised the Tamil rebels was assassinated. So we all learned to keep our mouths shut.
In September 1991, I changed nationalities. I swore allegiance to Australia at a citizenship ceremony in Parramatta Park. During that ceremony, I delivered a speech where I committed myself, as one of those who come from “beyond the seas”, to “advance Australia fair”.
Migrants like me love Australia because “we are young and free”. And many of us come from countries which are not free – where deviating from the approved political opinion is punished, therefore there’s no free speech. Public speech, in countries like the Sri Lanka of my childhood, was costly. It could cost you your life.
And it’s precisely that love of freedom, and my desire to advance Australia fair, that makes me worried about the Victorian government’s Change or Suppression Bill 2020.
The bill aims “to ensure that all” LGBT+ people “are able to live authentically and with pride” and “to denounce and give statutory recognition to the serious harm caused” by practices which suggest that “a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity” is in any way “broken”.
Nobody who opposes this bill is seeking to harm people who identify as LGBT+. The problem with this bill is the its definitions and prohibitions are so broad, it potentially criminalises any suggestion that sexuality has an objective order and that discovering and conforming to that order could be healthy for individuals, families, and society as a whole.
Most of human civilisation has, throughout history, believed that human sexuality is not a matter of personal preference, but possesses an objective order. Not all cultures agree on what that healthy pattern is. And not everyone within that society lives according to that healthy pattern. But they agree that it exists. And that talking about it, trying to discover it, and helping each other live according to it, is good.
This bill denounces that kind of belief, and prohibits and suppresses talking about it. This bill is on the wrong side of history. It seeks to criminalise something that has historically made human civilisation civil and humane.
Therefore, this bill is not actually progressive. It takes us backwards, into a dark age where public speech is costly and deviating from the approved political opinion gets punished.
LGBT+ activists often speak about “authenticity” and “pride”, and often accuse people who hold conservative values – especially religious people, and within that, especially Christians – as “harming” them. They’re welcome to do that. That’s an application of free speech.
And under conditions of free speech, social conservatives, religious people – including Christians – can talk back. We’re allowed to defend ourselves against those accusations of harm. And explain why we think healthy sexuality is not a matter of personal preference but possesses an objective order. And invite all people – including LGBT+ people – to willingly join us in living that sexuality because they’ve been persuaded that it’s right and good.
But by being an instrument of law, this bill takes away the right to talk back. If this bill becomes law, any assertion that healthy sexuality is ordered, not a matter of personal preference, could cost money or land you in jail. This threat of formal, legal punishment would intimidate people to self-censor. And that amounts to a stifling, in practice, of free speech.
That’s why this bill is dangerous. Not just for Christians, religious people, or social conservatives. This bill wrecks the social environment which has underpinned what we take for granted as a free, open, tolerant society – the kind of Australia I migrated to, love, and vowed to advance.
Mainstream media tend to caricature those who oppose this bill – especially religious people – as using public freedoms, like freedoms of speech and assembly, to protect themselves in a selfish, self-interested way. Is the mainstream media broad-minded enough to consider that we oppose this bill out of love? Love of freedom and tolerance? And love of country? And even – shock, horror – love of LGBT+ people?
And is the Victorian government broad-minded enough to make Victoria a place where social conservatives and religious people feel safe and welcome? Or has Australia gone backwards to become precisely the kind of country I was trying to escape from – a place that is not young and free, but old, cynical, and enslaved?’ https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/12/daniel-andrews-gender-antics-are-a-threat-not-enhancement-to-the-fundamentals-of-our-free-open-tolerant-society/
I had some black friends in high school back in the early 60’s and we all got along fine. They were black and I was white! We all knew what color we were and we lived with it. Not so today! Today, race and gender are the issue! Society is truly screwed up and sadly doesn’t look like it will get any better. The Western governments facilitate this racial and gender confusion and hatred. Do they really think having organizations for the different ethnic groups are going to cement everyone together? Well, whatever their reasoning ‘The National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC) celebrates the Black LGBTQ+/SGL candidates who have won their elections, and all who ran.
Of the 574 LGBTQ+ candidates running this year, at least 157 have won, including Ritchie Torres, the first out gay Afro-Latino, and Mondaire Jones the first out gay Black man, to be elected to Congress. They’re not alone.’ http://www.nbjc.org/media-center/releases/2020-election-NBJC-celebrates-100s-lgbtq-candidates
So, now we or rather they are celebrating not only the color of the person but the gender identity! My worry is not so much for me as an older person but my grandchildren growing up in this nonsensical society!
In January 2021 ‘Take your warmest life memories with you if and when the inauguration of ‘Temporary President’ Joe Biden makes way for the opening of the Gates of Hell—the Gulag—for all of humanity.
Memories are all the masses will have left—and over time the same bolsheviks who openly stole the 2020 Election will steal those too, whenever they find the way.
The saddest part about going into the Gulag is that your children and grandchildren with all the innocent toys of childhood are going with you, leaving you to wonder what will happen to them after you’re gone.
The “useful idiots” of the Communist bolsheviks —Joker Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) et al—will be free to disperse misery on the masses—at least for awhile.
All of the above went along with the Communist globalists—even while knowing that the first thing the regime mandates is getting rid of the useful idiots who brought them into power.
Much as so very many do not wish to hear it, government-mandated lockdowns were only the waiting room for the coming Gulag.
In Russian accents they say: “No God in Gulag”.
No hope, no change, as soon as the last of Hillary’s deplorables have been rounded up.
During the past 10 months, authorities wanted to assure themselves that there would be no public uprising over the lockdowns—and there never really was.
In this dark new era of the Great Reset, Washington power brokers will come at you live streamed over the ‘Net. No need for town halls while everyone’s in lockdown watching television.
Life Before Gulag (LBG) will be wiped out as part of the Cancel Culture, along with the American Dream cherished by millions in many other nations.’
‘Biden’s presidency will be short-lived, as he passes the presidential mantle on to Kamala Harris before stumbling off the world stage on his broken foot, but a live streamed Harris is only a front for Barack Hussein Obama, who sees her as his long-coveted Third Term.
But while the masses are confined to the new Lock Down, known as the Gulag, all of those who brought the Gulag about, will soon disappear as the Communists ‘disappear’ all their useful idiots.
Solzhenitsyn got out of the Gulag Archipelago—but only after years of unimaginable inhumane torment. The reason for his ultimate survival was that he never stopped thinking for himself.
Captives of the modern-day Gulag lost that ability by reading the purloined news and a steady diet of cable television.
Hard to believe that while waiting for the gates to shut behind all those coming into the Gulag, they were reading stories about how so-and-so looked “stunning” in a bikini at age fill-in-the-blank, or that Melania Trump broke the rules by reading to children without wearing a mask.
Tragic beyond belief that, thanks to the thieving Democrat Obama holdovers and their surrogate media, the masses never saw—or even suspected—that the Gulag was coming down the pike.
It will someday be the Irony of Ironies that In the fullness of time, all of those who bought into the visceral hatred of President Donald J. Trump will hate far more Every Day Life in the Gulag.
By that time, not a single soul trapped in the Gulag will be saying “Thanks for leaving us here”.
Meanwhile, the only way to never hear the horrible clank of the Gulag Gates behind you, is to defiantly refuse to go there.’ https://canadafreepress.com/article/temporary-president-biden-leading-the-free-world-off-to-the-gulag
Isaiah 10:1 Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees
I am almost 76 and way back in the late 50’s Saturday mornings were often spent watching ‘funny’ cartoons such as Daffy Duck, etc. None of the cartoons that I know of had the sole purpose of causing the viewer to question what gender they were! If they had an agenda other than being funny I am not sure what it was BUT NOT so today! The cartoon industry along with many others are out to get our children and in that change society. It’s pretty clear most of those who seek to change society are atheist/Marxist leaning individuals and one way it seems to change society is getting young people to question their gender.
Recently the ‘Cartoon Network released a comic strip highlighting the importance of respecting ‘many gender identities’ and loving a person no matter their preferred pronoun.
On Monday, the Twitter account associated with Cartoon Network tweeted a new series with the caption: “Here’s to not only normalizing gender pronouns, but respecting them, too.”
“Whether you use he/she/them or something else, we acknowledge and LOVE you!” it added, along with a link to the “Gender Justice Tool Kit” which it said was “designed to facilitate conversations that can save lives.”
The comic strips in the new series were created in partnership with the National Black Justice Coalition, a leftist, pro-LGBT organization.
Included with the tweet, was a comic strip featuring Stevonnie from Steven Universe and Craig from Craig of the Creek meeting two new friends, Kam and Alex.
“Gender pronouns describe a person’s gender identity,” one part of the comic strip read. “Examples of pronouns are she/her, they/them, an ze/zir. A lot of people are learning about gender. If you’re comfortable, you can share your own pronouns.”
“We can’t tell someone’s gender just by looking at them and shouldn’t assume we know,” the comic strip added. “There are many gender identities beyond ‘girl’ or ‘boy.’ Some people don’t identify as any gender.”
In a second part of the strip, two of the characters are talking about the pronouns they like to identify themself with, such as “they/them.”
“Using someone’s pronouns shows respect,” it concluded in the final strip. “We all need to be seen and loved for who we are.”’ https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/17/cartoon-network-promotes-the-many-gender-identities-kids-can-partake-in/
All this propaganda that is being promoted on gender identity is anti-God for God’s Word is plain in Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
‘Perhaps you are far enough removed from what it is to be “woke” that you don’t know what it is. It might sound familiar, because it echoes religious connotations, as very often a counterfeit does. Scripture uses “awakening” to speak of true spiritual enlightenment. The Bible calls on unbelievers to wake up, which would mean being saved, and also admonishes believers to wake up in order to stir them from some degree of apathy. In this case, however, being woke means that you have the special knowledge to see what others can’t see. You “spot” white privilege and systemic racism everywhere with x-ray style vision that others miss.
How does someone become woke? Expertise or specialization in critical theory. How does one get this knowledge? Honestly, it is something closer to competence in the use of the divining rod for locating water. It is the the bizarre knowledge of the Gnostic, moved by something extraordinary in the realm of an ecstatic experience. The more fantastical the claim the greater possibility of correctness. The Apostle Paul describes something like it among the Corinthians out of Babylonian mysticism (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:1-3).
If I were to walk up to just any white person and call him a racist, he asks, why? I answer, it’s obvious, but it’s something that you are inherently blinded to. You are not woke to its reality in you. BLM adherents have gone around doing something similar, asking random white people to admit their racism and privilege at the threat of violence. It’s like the Salem witch trials. If they don’t confess they are a witch, they are drowned. The blindness, characterized by an unwillingness to admit racism, apparently comes through a social construction imposed upon the country. All whites are so immersed in systemic racism, that they don’t know they’re all racists.
In part one, I focused on the individuality of Trumpism compared to the judgment of wokeness. I want to explore the relations of wokeness to the gospel, partly to reveal its destructiveness in nature. Woke evangelicals preach repentance of group sins in line with Marxist group identity. A whole group, white people, is guilty of systemic racism. Reparations is a legal remedy for group sin. You might say that you aren’t racist and that you’ve never harmed another race. You say that, but you don’t “know” that because you aren’t trained to see it. You aren’t woke. You haven’t swallowed the blue pill.
The undermining of the gospel comes through a collective sin that brings group guilt. The group that sinneth, it shall die, which is just the opposite of what Ezekiel and Jeremiah and everywhere else in the Bible taught related to sin and guilt. It would then require group repentance. White people are guilty. Men are guilty. Straight people are guilty. Even if a white person becomes woke, he must still be named in the class action suit. Part of wokeness is admission of group guilt. This is the only way to forgiveness.
This spiritual collectivism contradicts scripture. Jesus Christ came to save individuals, not groups. A single person is awakened to his own sin and his own need of repentance. He enters the kingdom as an individual. He stands before God as an individual. The soul that sinneth, it shall die (Ezekiel 18:4). A man must examine himself for what he has done, not his group.
The transformation of wokeness is for the collective. The change is group change. A living sacrifice submerges himself in and for the group and the expense of his individuality. This is their Jesus, another Jesus, bringing in their imagination of the kingdom.
How are people awakened to their guilt of racism, sexism, transgenderism, and perhaps Trumpism? It’s a specialized knowledge, so you can either become a practitioner of critical theory, which is akin to learning divination or you can listen to the preaching of the theorist. He’s cherry picking scripture into which he can force his theory without historical precedent. No one had ever found in the Bible what he says he has found. He goes a looking to bring critical theory into God’s Word. It’s a reinvention of Christianity as detected through a seer stone.
The individuality of Trumpism matches the gospel and is a repudiation of the collectivism of evangelical wokeness. Wokeness undermines the gospel. It is in fact a different gospel. It requires group accession and group repentance. This is adding to the gospel, which makes it legalism. The requirement is conforming to the group.
I’m not saying that Trump himself is converted, that he is saved or that President Donald Trump has believed the gospel. I don’t believe so. I’m sure that some Trump supporters think he is. They’ve heard reports of private evangelism of Trump followed by a profession of faith. I don’t see a changed individual life of Donald Trump. By the abundance of his heart, he speaks, and I hear corrupt speech, bitter waters proceeding from a bitter fountain.
Others, which might be seen as adherents to Trumpism, take the position that Trump is a blunt instrument of change, ordained by a sovereign God. One analogy, I’ve read, is that he is chemotherapy to cancer, a painful methodology for a necessary cure or at least greater postponement of death. Advocates of the chemo acknowledge the cancer. The body is cancerous. It needs chemotherapy and Trump is it. The cessation of Trump, they diagnose, bolsters the cancer.
An irony to the lack of conversion of Donald Trump by judging him as an individual, however, is that I hear the same as bad or worse corrupt speech from woke evangelicals. Trump just doesn’t receive the gospel. He’s responsible. They see themselves as covered by their group identity. They are woke, so they are absolved of group guilt, their filthy language and lascivious lifestyles notwithstanding. It is a form of left wing legalism. Their sins are covered by their “good works.”
Many white people, who aren’t woke, believe the truth about race, that it is an arbitrary distinction, not backed by scripture. The Bible doesn’t recognize race. It does acknowledge a covenantal distinction between Jew and Gentile. These white people want a color blind society. They want equal treatment, vis-a-vis James chapter two. They also eliminate covenantal distinctions in the church age. They want to be free to judge according to scripture.
Park on the last part of that last sentence of that last paragraph: “to be free to judge according to scripture.” That is true freedom, ordained by God. It also gives someone the freedom to be released as an individual from the charge of racism. Someone can actually be saved, truly converted. He’s not a racist anymore.
The movement aligned with David French, Beth Moore, and Rod Dreher distorts the gospel. Its righteousness is one of virtue signaling. It constructs modern phylacteries. They signal to everyone how righteous, actually woke, they are. The toll levied for leftist acceptance produces a false gospel. They can talk about Jesus, what He can really do, but He becomes of no affect, because He doesn’t remove the group guilt of which “Trumpists” are not woke. They won’t allow for individual redemption through their group or community sin and guilt. The Apostle Paul says concerning them, if they will add anything to the true gospel, let them be accursed.’https://kentbrandenburg.blogspot.com/2020/12/what-is-trumpism-part-two-gospel.html
‘Anonymous comments, some I did publish and most I didn’t, and others under my most recent post, in which I briefly mentioned President Trump, were typical of what I get when I ever say his name. They are angry, insulting, unhinged, foul, devoid of reason, and carnal. And they want me to be a better Christian, or just a Christian period, by not uttering the name, Trump. It would have been easier for me not to have written more about Trump, but I’ve chosen to double down and write something right away, because the point of putting on the pressure — they would censor if they could. I’d say at least forty percent of the Democrat party would like public religious or biblical speech illegal and punished. It starts with intimidation.
The instinct to silence speech has spread into evangelicalism. Leftists or progressives have their favorite and quotable “evangelicals,” who have brought an ambiguity to scripture that allows for interlocutors to transmogrify it to their own liking. This doesn’t please or honor God, not laboring for divine approval. It negotiates greater likeability of more and various parties, looking for a sweet spot to land somewhere in between. There are many potential motivations, but mainly today quite simply, it’s to look “woke.” Being woke is now being elite, scholarly, scientific, and compassionate. It’s also being wrong and extremely destructive. These “evangelical” characters become protected from criticism. Anyone who does criticize is either a racist, sexist, or just a sycophant for Trump, who has been drawn into his cult of followers, partly unaware, or not having the critical theory, to know he’s a white supremacist.
One of the more woke and feminist favorites of the left and progressives is the popular, celebrity, evangelical, female teacher in the Southern Baptist Convention, Beth Moore, with her 975,000 twitter followers, drew a lot of praise with the following tweet on Sunday this week:
For those interested, this article from TGC addresses more comprehensively what I referenced on Sunday. If you’re seeking further explanation, you might find it helpful. The Cult of Christian TrumpismThe cult of Christian Trumpism has nothing to do with serious politics or serious Christianity, but is the culmination of many decades of exploiting both.thegospelcoalition.org
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/cult-christian-trumpism/
I’m 58 2/3 years old and I’m pretty sure that Moore picked up the terminology “Trumpism” from her good friend, David French, when she was directed to his just published article on The Dispatch, where he is senior editor, entitled, The Dangerous Idolatry of Christian Trumpism. He’s also a columnist at Time, and was a guest this morning on the Morning Joe show on MSNBC. The Dispatch was a publication launched in October 2019 by men notoriously neoconservative and never-Trump, Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg. Trump, of course, has been hated by the pure neocons, ever since he came on the scene, pummeling Governor Jeb Bush out of the 2016 primaries.
For a start, whatever Trumpism is, Beth Moore herself, her kind, and their teaching are more dangerous than it. This is not to approve of much of what French exposed in his piece, even though I do understand the thinking of those people more than I do Moore’s and French’s. A very destructive problem is this faulty thinking that Trumpism, whatever it is, is the problem. I’m saying that I don’t know what Trumpism is because it is a word that serves as a vessel to pour many different definitions that might suit the one who uses it. Whatever it is though, I would evaluate Trumpism as a net gain in the United States, compared to the absence of Trumpism. It’s not a replacement for Jesus Christ. It isn’t the formation of a new gospel. It isn’t the answer, but it is a safe space ironically to find an answer.
Some of what is called Trumpism is not true. One should say that everything from the left is not true. The left lives in a world of lies or that a world that is a lie, both. Neoconservatives aren’t biblical Christians, which are the only Christians, that is, biblical ones. They are so associated with progressives now that they aren’t even liberal enough anymore to show up on Fox News. Their associations with the left annul them. They are relegated to CNN and MSNBC purgatory.
Just as an aside, who is the crowd of people that the Southern Baptist Convention or evangelicalism is going to receive and keep, who apparently accepts the gospel and this Woke thinking that accommodates the left? They think they’ll pick them up, while they ignore the deplorables? Or maybe they think they already have the people who, as President Obama put it, “cling to their guns and religion”? They don’t, but those are far more likely to consider the Bible than the ones they are attempting to impress. Those people have already sold their souls.
Trumpism has a Wikipedia page, certainly written by leftists there. You know that you’ve got make-believe when a big part of the definition is “narcisissm,” which is constitutive to critical theory. Narcissism was introduced to psychotherapy by the God-denying atheist, Sigmund Freud. Those who use it, like it’s being used today, I read apply it in Freud-like manner. It’s not what we might think, sinful pride, from scripture. The labeling of Trumpism, which includes Trump supporters, as narcissists is an aspect of critical theory through a marriage of Marxism and Freudianism.
The Trump supporter believes in liberty, which is tied to individuality, even in the definition of Americanism. For the Christian, which isn’t every Trump supporter, this is the individual relationship with God, rights God gives an individual (not a group), and individual salvation or redemption. God saves individuals, not groups. A major appeal of Trump to true believers is the individualism he represents in his beliefs, which to him probably stems from the era from which he comes, this being a far more prominent view, and then the Presbyterian church in which he grew up. It was a liberal church, but today it would look conservative.
The left puts its emphasis on the group — think group identity — and what you hear most often today, community, as in “community organizer.” Individualism is equated with narcissism. These are people so concerned for their own liberty, that they neglect the group. The practical purpose of critical theory is said to redirect individual narcissism towards collectivism. The individual lacks in critical reflection, destining for himself to act upon his own self-interests. One symptom then of this narcissism is the demonization of others, anyone different. Freud was Jewish, and especially at that juncture in history, saw this as the narcissism too in nationalistic tendencies that reject other ethnic identity, which later critical theory pointed out the need for this narcissism to find its expression in an autocratic leader.
Between the two, scripture, therefore, God, teaches individual rights: the right to life and the right to property. You don’t have true freedom if someone can play horseshoes in his neighbors front lawn or invade his refrigerator. Marxism believes that the state is God. At the root of its equality is equality of outcome, accomplished at the group level, the community. Capitalism is narcissistic because the person wants to keep what he owns instead of sharing it all with others. Anyway, you get the picture.
The protection of individual rights is the purpose of government. Trump supporters, not blind to Trump, don’t see Trump as a ruler who wants absolute power. I am a Trump supporter. I don’t see it. Trump was the de-regulator. He unchained individuals to innovate, much like we saw with the production of ventilators and then the vaccine.
The oligarchy of Big Tech is where I see autocracy. These Democrat governors closing their states for business are the autocrats. Trump was criticized during the pandemic for not “providing leadership,” which would mean a national mask mandate, something like that. Trump allowed the states the power reserved by the constitution to the states. His threat of intervention, which he didn’t really use, came with the endangerment of the citizens in Democrat run cities.
The freedom of religion is the right of the individual, as seen in the free exercise clause. Trump encouraged and supported the individual freedom to gather and worship against the Democrat instinct, like a state church, to conform to the state. The point of nationalism is the protection of individual rights again. Open borders destroys private ownership. People can’t be free if they are not protected, which is why the first role of government is protection. Protection requires borders and walls. These ideals have also been chosen to be superior to the alternative.
The left will call the individualism of Trump, not only narcissistic, but cultic. The only cultic tendency that characterizes Trumpism, that I see, yes, is taken to an extreme by some people. I don’t see it as a dangerous extreme, but I do see it as a necessary extreme right now to combat the collectivism of the left. I’ve heard the left call them black or brown shirts, which is a lie.
True Christians believe in the sovereignty of God. They believe God is the author of history. They believe that God brought Trump in whatever way they compare him to other leaders in world history whom God has providentially caused or allowed to gain power. Some probably have a cult like belief in this. They’re wrong to think that way, but I see them as a necessary, even providential, deterrent to the Marxists and Communists. They have far more adherents to their wicked, dangerous, and destructive collectivist cult. They are warped and blinded in far worse ways than the simplicity of the most fervent MAGA hat wearers.
A means to an end, Trumpism allows Americans to keep being Americans. Trump hasn’t come close to living like the country he wants to allow Americans to have. He hasn’t lived it himself, but he has fought for those who believe in it. Others who have said they have believed in it wouldn’t and didn’t fight. They capitulate still. If one of them had fought like he has, we may have preferred one of them to him. This is what we got, like Israel got Samson and Cyrus in the Old Testament.
Trumpism, the word itself, is a type of critical theory tool. Words are power. David French and Beth Moore want you, Trump supporter, to be ashamed of yourself. Don’t be.’https://kentbrandenburg.blogspot.com/2020/12/what-is-trumpism.html
whatyareckon 