The View from Pendle Hill

A consideration of the radical nature of the Gospel. Christianity began as a social and political as well as religious revolution. The Magnificat sets a tone which may best be expressed as "the world turned upside down." Jesus was a gadfly to the establishment of His time, and bequeathed the same mentality to His Apostles. They changed the world, and within the lifetime of the last living Apostle, simple Christianity was well on the way to transforming the known world.

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You will learn of me from the writings on the blog. The Gospel is all-important. If we fail to live up to its potential, we have failed to realize our full potential.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Prophet-margin?

I have just been reading some pamphlets of The White Rose Society. Though I am well acquainted with the Society from earlier, it is good to learn how many others are aware of and in tune with, the student group during the Nazi oppression in Germany. We need a White Rose Society in the US today...some group of students and adults who understand their prophetic duties to preserve the people of the Republic. A boisterous group of pamphleteers who will courageously dare the Bushites and their neo-Nazi followers to rise up and answer the charges levelled at them.
It is evident that Congress is just too involved with posturing and hollow rhetoric. They are getting nothing done, and while George Bush sits in the White House, they will get nothing done - well, nothing of any real subtance for the populace. He is determined not to give in and they are just as determined not to haul him out of the Oval Office, impeaching him, trying him for his war crimes and other unConstitutional acts and then slapping the stiffest and harshest penalty on him that the law will allow. Let that obtain for Cheney, too. These men and their hangers-on have brought the United States into such disrepute and so endangered the Constitutional law of this Republic that they deserve neither consideration nor the respect of the offices they stole.
Sadly, again, Congress seems unwilling to address this mess, nor will they listen to we, the tax-payers, who insist we will be heard.
It is difficult to maintain a Christian equanimity and charity in such a circumstance. No more could I have stayed back and allowed the Nazis in Germany to do what they did, without some protest, cost what it may. Neither will I permit these neo-Nazis to perpetrate their none-too-subtle reign of terror without vociferously speaking out. The Lord has called me to use my voice to announce HIS TRUTH and I am feckless if I fail to observe HIS LAW.
I am a veritable Jonah, a reluctant prophet, but a prophet still. If I don't tell these people to repent of their sins and amend their ways, then the judgment falls on me. But, if they are told and then choose venality, well, then they have made an informed decision and the judgment falls on them. Frankly, I wonder what their clergy are telling them, but that is not my concern. The Most High deals with each of us in HIS own way.
So, though my body may be old and arthritic, that does not say my mind is weak, or that the TRUTH I am called to lift high is of lesser value only because my physical self is weakened. That is the lovely thing about the Kingdom: HE will use any willing workers. Indeed, it seems to be the case that the LORD prefers to use the poor, the ill, the disenfranchised, the lepers and whores - penitents all - to preach HIS message and to spread HIS Kingdom.
HE has a most remarkable sense of humor, has our Father. HE finds the justice in having the poor preach to the rich. HE sees the justice in having the sick witness to those who enjoy a high degree of health care, which seems to serve neither party well - the rich are too corrupt to derive benefit from the health care (the bodies may be repaired, but the souls are too decrepit); the sick are too poor to afford such over-priced, such wasteful and discriminatory health-care. HE rejoices when a person embraces the leper and kisses his wounds. It turns the world upside down, but it restores morality and order to Creation.
On a slightly different note, but in the same vein:
I am tired of the all-consuming desire to rack up money (profit, mammon) by the people of both this nation and the larger world. If we look at the way this adminstration has arranged things, we see that the concern has been all for the wealthy and those who desire to acquire yet more wealth. Even our foreign policy over many years has been to support fascist despots, with NO regard to the poor, the workers, those who are without anything to eat or gas to put in their cars, nor even homes to drive to...and we permit this shameful state of affairs to continue.
The United States seems to have lost its soul. We sold it to the highest bidder. We all might as well begin learning Mandarin now, one of these days the Chinese will demand payment on the bill and we will have to find the "readies."
What will it take for the citizens of the world to understand that the greatest good for the greatest number will be accomplished by implementing a socialism.
I do not know that this socialism needs to be either text-book OR severe, but clearly, something MUST be done to advance the cause of humanity and Creation at large, or the mammon accrued will serve no-one any use or good.
We have no right to hoard more than we can reasonably use or eat. We certainly do not make the best use of what we have now. Buying cheap rubbish from slave-labor countries is shameful and has only served to put domestic workers out of work. As Jesus asks, What good profit if you lose your soul? How can you hold your head up, knowing that the men and women who used to work for you are now unemployed, very possibly homeless and almost certainly without medical care thanks to your greed? And while I admit this state of affairs was on the rise well before Bush stole the presidency, he has made the accumulation of money and the conspicuous consumption of wealth a by-word of his administration. He is a scandal to the great nation we are. It is (long since) time he was impeached and tried for his high crimes and misdemeanors.
The vacuousness of George Bush, his mean-spiritedness, his being a school-yard bully, are demeaning of the office he presumes to occupy.
We have neither health-care nor job security. There is no social safety-net once the unemployment runs its course and homelessness is a matter of two weeks without work or, of course, foreclosure. Now that is just the tip of the iceberg and much of that got started with Reagan, that evil man.
We have been very ill-served by many of our presidents. Granted, they are neither more nor less than we, who elect them, but some of them have been despicable fascist war-mongers and liars and ought to have been called on their sins immediately. That makes them considerably worse than most of my fellow country-men and -women, who are, taking them all round, very decent folk.
Yet we let these criminals stand, aware of their feet of clay but willing to drop that pinch of incense to the idol!
We have only ourselves to blame for this terrible state in which we find ourselves.
And that is perhaps the saddest remark one can make - we have only ourselves to blame for the mess in which we are now. Sad, sad, sad.

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