Category Archives: Christendom

The Uses of History, 13 – Christmas, 2

When you study at a university or any institution of higher learning, you study at an institution which was born in and emerged out of the Christian culture of medieval and early modern Europe. When you enjoy the benefits of universal public education, you are reaping the benefits of the foundational work of many generations of churchmen and churchwomen who believed in the right of ordinary people to know how to read, write, and do basic mathematics – then extended that to the right of all who could and would seek it to pursue the knowledge and skills God had created them to understand and be able to develop.

When you go to a hospital and receive medical care dedicated to “doing no harm” and treating you with the respect you deserve whether young or old, rich or poor, male or female, of any religion or ethnicity, you are benefitting from the Christian view of human beings as being made in God’s image and worthy of all care and consideration because all lives are of equal and infinite value in God’s eyes. That is the whole basis of universal public health care, of universal public education, of universal human rights.

The Uses of History, 12 – Christmas, 1

the Bethlehem Baby … grew up to be the greatest inspirational figure in all human history. Remove all the subsequent distortions of what He and His first followers said and began, and no message ever brought or still brings greater light and hope. Try as hard as we might, He and His Good News cannot ever be replaced with anything remotely comparable from any source.

The Queen

If we are willing to look at Elizabeth R.’s life as a parable and a portrait, she has much to teach. Would to God that some of the myriads of leaders and supposedly wise observers and commentators would see what she really has to teach them and take it to heart. At the very least, one can hope and pray that, at the very least, her son and successor, King Charles III, will do so, as will the extended Windsor Family.

Cold Love, 4 – The Quality of Mercy

The Christian Story says that the Creator-God did not sit back and shrug. Instead, speaking anthropomorphically, (S)He is deeply grieved, even distressed, and even angry. However, God’s ultimate response is mercy rather than wrath, although wrath has been allowed to fall. If we are willing to face our rebellion and defiance of God, we must see that, just as with human offenders in human society, there is an inevitable day when judgment finds the unrepentant transgressor. This is called “natural consequences”, and it applies in both the physical and metaphysical realm. It also comes as a legal requirement.

Cold Love, 3 – A Case Study

Agape is the highest form of love which God exampled in Jesus. He commissioned a community of followers which became known as the Church, to continue to spread it and bring it into every part of human life and society. It is sad to watch and lamentable to admit that cold love has all too often and too much crept into the Churches of the West, not to speak of the secular, godless ideologies which have supplanted them here in the rich and comfortable West.

Outliers, 6 – Consequences

In the 2020s, we find ourselves swimming in the social, moral, ethical, environmental, industrial, cultural, and economic swamp which is the consequence of this deconstruction. The swamp is filled with the increasingly murky waters of personalized, politicized “truth” seeking to drown and smother Truth in the muck of “everything is OK, as long as you’re not intolerant (oops! how did that new “Truth” slip in there?), except of those we declare to be intolerant because they tell us there really is Truth and right and wrong and good and bad in the world.”

Outliers, 3 – Metanoia

The most radical, greatest Outlier who ever lived is Jesus. He is the only human being who died but rose from death and is still alive today. Even if He had not done this, He would still rank at the top of the list in terms of his impact on history, culture, and society over the last two thousand years. To conform all He claimed we have His real resurrection. It is both a faith and historical fact.

Outliers, 2 – Little People

It is not the demigods of business, entertainment, politics, and sport who have raised the poor from the slums, ended slavery, fought for workers’ rights, brought in universal healthcare (at least in the nations which have it), fought to end discrimination of every sort, and poured out their blood to defeat the horrors of Nazism, Fascism and other tyrannies. And it will not be the Superstar Outliers who will continue to lead the defense of freedom, liberty, and what is left of morality.

Freedom, 7 – The Ongoing Quest

The illusion is that by human-engendered wisdom we can create Utopia. It is an illusion because there is no final peace unless we are reconciled to the Creator, who made us with a hole in our soul that only He/She can fill. Peace within is reconciliation with the Supreme Person who alone can erase our brokenness which drives us to wage continual war upon one another and upon the creation itself. That primal reconciliation dispels the Big Lie that only I, or at most I and my special group, deserve to be really free. That primal reconciliation leads us to be reconciled to the Creation itself so that we can respect the rights and freedoms of all created things in their own nature and place within the Cosmos.