disappointment found in the bending of the cow’s knees

You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

******Since writing this post, Lynn Abbott, whose husband owns and operates a
Chick-fil-A has reached out to me to set the record straight—
that the recent news regarding Chick-fil-A
is not the full truth…
Chick-fil-A is not cutting ties with The Fellowship of Christian Athletes and
The Salvation Army
Please read Lynn’s comment in the comment section and please see my following post
that includes Lynn’s informative clarification!

I’ve written many a post over the years in support of Atlanta’s local homegrown and crowd
favorite, bovine inspired, chicken sandwich shop–Chick-fil-A.

Those amusing and much beloved illiterate cows, who constantly
encourage folks to “eat mor chikin”, have helped to turn a once lone little restaurant,
on the outskirts of Atlanta, into a national institution.

The creation of the ‘original chicken sandwich, a restaurant,
lovingly dubbed the Drawf House, along with a sound Christian foundation were each
contributing factors that helped to turn one man’s small dream into a booming business.

The late Truett Cathy and his desire for feeding bodies, as well as spirits,
helped turn a dream into a business that is now ranked as one of the nation’s top
fast-food chains.

Mr. Cathy, a devout Christian, build his food empire on Biblical principles.
Even stating that the Bible was his “playbook” for operating.
With the foremost operating decision being that his restaurants close on Sundays,
the sabbath day for the Christian church.

With the Sabbath being that proverbial 7th day of Creation, of which is to be a day of
rest and worship, Cathy fought the mounting demands of an ever-growing
secular population to let go of an archaic notion and open his restaurants
7 days a week…
‘Just think of all the business, and in turn revenue, you’re missing out on’
folks would say…
But we know, just as Cathy knew,
that God will bless and honor those who bless and honor Him.

Cathy always refused the demanding pushback to his decision to close on Sundays
as it would allow his employees the opportunity of attending church with
their families should they so choose…
Just as it afforded Cathy the ability to honor God by marking the Sabbath as “holy.”

Since his death in 2014, his sons, who now own and oversee this mega food corporation,
have remained faithful to their father’s original guiding principals…
that is until…this week.

Those original guiding principles, those principles of traditional Christian values,
have been sorely tested over the past couple of years by an ever-increasingly rabid,
post-Christian, liberal society.

With the most recent example being the closing of Chick-fil-A’s first
franchised restaurant in the UK due to mounting protests from the LGBTQ_ _ _
(add in any other letters that you chose that I’ve forgotten)
community and its supporters over the fact that the Christian based foodchain
does not support same-sex marriage while it offers donations to various charitable
organizations that share their same Christian values and beliefs—
organizations such as The Salvation Army.

Really??!!

The Salvation Army???!!

The very organization founded on Methodist Christian principles in 1865
that has grown to be one of the largest global organizations to rush in to offer
aid and comfort to those ravaged by natural disasters or simply by hard times.
As taken from Wikipedia, the Salvation Army was formed as it
“sought to bring salvation to the poor, destitute, and hungry by meeting both
their “physical and spiritual needs.”

And so now Chick-fil-A is painfully discovering that it is no longer acceptable,
or better yet not tolerated, to disagree with something that the “left” readily endorses.
Just as it is no longer acceptable to support any charitable Christian organization that
shares the belief that marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman,
or the desire to honor God’s words…let alone honoring any other Christian value.

Because if you do, you will be marginalized and maligned until you bend.

And so this week, the house that Cathy built, built on the foundation, words,
and promises proclaimed by the God of all Creation, caved in to the pressures
of a maniacal society.

And thus, the cows have been brought to their knees, bending.
Bending the very core ideals once instilled by their founder all in order to appease
an ever-increasingly intolerant society.

Genuflecting to the secular god of sexual perversion as such is now seen as the new normal.

And yet we’ve all known of this bending for quite some time have we not?

We’ve known, as we’ve painfully watched, that if anyone disagrees with a
radicalized society, any and all will be forced to agree or will either be
shut down or better yet, destroyed.

For when one decides to bend in hopes of forging a compromise…
hoping that that bend, that compromise,
will be enough to ward off the ideological demagogues…
it will become deadly and readily apparent that the rabid masses will not be appeased…
not until everyone in opposition not only bends but are more aptly broken.

Shame on Chick-fil-A.
They don’t even realize that their willingness to distance themselves from their
once strong allied charities, that being The Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes—
their willingness to bend away from their once deeply rooted Christian principles will eventually
and most sadly lead to their demise…
becoming but a mere shadow of Truett Cathy’s original desire to honor God.

This is what the Lord has commanded.
If a man vows a vow to the Lord, or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge,
he shall not break his word. He shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.
Numbers 30:2

Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name.
Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you;
for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you,
and he will destroy you from the face of the land.
Do not put the LORD your God to the test as you did at Massah.
Be sure to keep the commands of the LORD your God and the stipulations and
decrees he has given you. 18 Do what is right and good in the LORD’s sight,
so that it may go well with you and you may go in and take over the good land
the LORD promised on oath to your ancestors, thrusting out all your enemies before you,
as the LORD said.
In the future, when your son asks you,
“What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God has commanded you?”
tell him: “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt,
but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.
Before our eyes the LORD sent signs and wonders—great and terrible—on Egypt and Pharaoh
and his whole household.
But he brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the
land he promised on oath to our ancestors.
Deuteronomy 6:13-23

we stand on the periphery

We should weep as we watch our society regress into the pre-Christian Greco-Roman/pagan
view of the world.
David Roberston

(Laocoön and his sons, also known as the Laocoön Group. Marble,
copy after an Hellenistic original from ca. 200 BC.
Found in the Baths of Trajan, 1506.)

It’s no secret that I ardently follow and read the words and observations of two very
different, yet actually very similar, clerics who both happen to live in the UK.
One is a Free Church Presbyterian Pastor in Scotland the other is a former Chaplin
to the Queen and former Anglican priest,
who now happens to be Bishop of the Christian Episcopal Chruch.

They are evangelical, conservative, orthodox, traditional–clerics of two vastly
different denominations yet both are much more similar than they are different.

I’m not sure as to whether either man is familiar with the other but I would suspect
that they have some sort of knowledge of one another as each man has had his
fair share of attacks by a more liberal press for holding to and freely voicing a
strong Biblically rooted Christian faith.

When it comes to defending the Christian teachings, neither man is afraid to
take on MPs, authors, professors, reporters or other clergy members.
They are each, in their own right, true defenders of the faith.

They are both very learned men and well read.
And they can certainly hold their own and not think twice nor bat an eye when
it comes to professing the Truth as it is met with every form of attack and or assault.

I admire that in them.

They do not buy into the feel-good dribble being passed off in so many churches these days
as a modern take on Christianity—that when stripped and pared down to the bare bones,
it is nothing more than the self-proclaimed gospel of the individual verses
the Gospel of the Risen Christ.

In Christianity, there are some very hard truths.
Truths that we in this 21st century of ours have grown unable to stomach as we find them
difficult as well as uncomfortable and therefore intolerable to acknowledge or accept.

Jesus did not come into this world to pat us on our heads and tell us of the marvelous
job we are doing.
He did not come to applaud our half-hearted efforts nor the notion of ‘if it feels good,
it is good’ nonsense.

Jesus came to save the sinner.
And the sinner is each one of us.
Each of us is at fault.
If you don’t believe that then your ego is bigger than your very soul.

Each one of us falls short.
Each one of us needs a savior…if not saving from the world…saving rather, from our
very selves.

The fact that our culture is not progressing, as we so often quip with our labels of post
modern progressivism… but rather, in actuality, we are regressing…
Regressing back to a time of self-absorption and intolerant barbarism as we live
our lives preferring the paganism of a myriad of self-created demi-gods to the One True God.

We are slowly becoming what we so smugly deemed of those in the past as primitive,
ignorant, egotistical, ancient and primal.

Hedonistic is the better description.

I am encouraged knowing that there remains those who continue to speak the Truth despite
the world’s desire to dispel it.

Whereas those of us who hold steadfast to the Christian faith know that the battles
continue to rage, the war has already been indeed won—
Yet we may still weep as we take stock of the battles we are beginning to fight.
As fight, we must.

https://ashenden.org

https://theweeflea.com

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead,
and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge:
Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct,
rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.
For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine.
Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of
teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist,
discharge all the duties of your ministry.
2 Timothy 4:1-5

diluted

“The holy hour for Germans will be at hand when the symbol of their reawakening–
the flag with the swastika—
has become the only true confession of faith in the Reich.”
Alfred Rosenberg

(a sanderling drips water from his bill / Rosemary Beach, Fl / Julie Cook / 2017)

Always with the passing of time, words and thoughts that once had been pointed, hard, difficult and even monstrous…take on a softening, a smoothing and even entirely
different meanings then their original intent.

That is not necessarily a good thing but rather a result of time….
because time has a way of diluting truth and clouding the mind.

We see a lot of this sort of thing happening today in our own current time.
We hear words that once meant one thing now meaning something else entirely as
new generations decode a past into something else totally other than what was an
original intent.

We hear a lot of folks today throwing around words such as fascism, Nazi, swastika, tolerant, intolerant, socialist, ideology…to name but a few now oddly shapened words.
And chances are most of the folks throwing around these odd words aren’t old enough to
remember the time in which such words first came into being.

So with the passage of time these previous words, now oddly shapened, have become diluted…their meanings today are entirely different to a new generation who has added them to their current caustic vocabulary.

Our current history lessons, having grossly failed the original context of each word,
as well as the generations of the up and coming who are grasping blindly
and wildly at said words, risk being rewritten forever if those of us who know better and who know the Truth fail to tell it.

Ignorance has mingled with ego and bravado creating a toxic ill informed cocktail.
As sadly these current times do not seem to notice their mirrored image to that
of an equally caustic, angry and bravado laced time…

In his book The Book Thieves, Anders Rydell does an excellent job of laying out the historical facts more succinctly than any current US High School history book that
covers the rise of the NSDAP, or what is commonly
referred to as the Nazi party, in Germany pre WWII.

His numerical facts, while overwhelming and staggering, are painfully precise.
His timeline of events is pinpoint accurate.
Such precision, as is found in his tale, is both a wonder and a stalk reminder of the darkest days of the twentieth century yet is purely a tale recounting the
plundering of books.

With the very word plundered / plundering being far from today’s current vocabulary.

For in our current minds, it is hard to phantom the complete wiping out of
libraries or collections of books when we have grown accustomed to cheap paperback
romance novels being picked up at the corner drug store to the more recent vanguard of electronic books….

To our modern minds, books are basically an endless commodity…
for they are as far as the internet may reach.
Meaning that to this current generation, the notion of an entire book collection
being wiped from the planet, rendering various texts more or less extinct, is incomprehensible.

Because surely you can find it on the internet right?

Yet there was a time when books were investments, sacred, and treasured.
Numbers of various writings limited.
There was no endless supply.

It is difficult for our modern minds to comprehend authorities entering into our homes while carrying away our books.
Important papers, valuables…yes…but our books? No.

What if the books by your bedside table were suddenly gone, considered
contraband against the State?
Your family Bible being considered dangerous or even insubordinate against the State.
Impossible you say…but there was a time when that was more fact than fiction.
As it would behoove us to remember it is continuing to this very day…

“Until 1939 the Nazis had devoted themselves to fighting their internal enemies,
such as German Jews, socialists, Communists, liberal, Freemasons and Catholics.
This ideological war was now to fan out across Europe in the wake of the Wehrmacht’s
victorious armies.”
(p.104)

So we see that Nazi Germany was two things.

It was a military force as well as an ideological force.
There were generals and soldiers who fought with guns, plans and tanks
and there were those who fought with thoughts and ideas…

“The Nazis waged their war on two levels: first, by conventional means, with their
armies pitched against other in military conflict, and second, by war against the ideological opposition.
The latter was not a conflict that took place on the battlefield;
it was rather a silent war of disappearances, terror, torture, murder and
deportation, whose frontline soldiers were the Gestapo, the SD, and other parts of
the regime’s terror machine.
It was a war in which the intention was not to vanquish but to liquidate.”
(P 104)

“To form the generation that would lead the Third Reich into the future, the
traditional school system was not enough.
In order to create a fundamentally new human being, a new kind of school would be required.”
(p. 88)

“Under the Nazis, the classroom became a microcosm of the totalitarian state.”
(p. 88)

As I read Rydell’s meticulous tale I understood that the Nazi war machine was more than
Mein Kampf, Adolph Hitler, Heinrich Himmler or Herman Goering and their insatiable appetites for apparently world domination, but rather there was a even a more sinister
individual involved.

One may even speculate that Alfred Rosenberg was just as instrumental in the
rise of the Nazi’s mania machine as much as Adolph Hiter.
Rosenberg was the father of the ideology and philosophy behind the National Socialist movement, whereas Hitler was the outward visionary.
It was Rosenberg who laid the structural foundation.
Yet with each man being equally as deranged in their desires for a new Germany.

However we of the modern world scratch our heads as we wonder as to how a Nation that
was considered to be the most culturally developed and brilliant of nations could
succumb to the grandiose vision of madmen.

“When the Nazis came to power, the German school and university system
was considered the best in the world.
No other school system had produced more Nobel Prize winners.
By 1933 Germany had won thirty three Nobel Prizes, while the United States had won
only eight”
(p.86)

I am reminded of the words of The Reverend Gavin Ashenden when he was recently
asked about the rising issue of transgenderism now seen taking place
in primary schools across Great Britain.
He noted that many people ask what is the big deal.
So what if a girl of 8 decides she shall be a boy…?
What is the big deal if a 6 year old boy decides he wants to be a girl?

Rev Ashenden quickly warns us that the big deal is when the human imagination
begins to be distorted.
When we create a world based on our narcissism and idolatry of self
we challenge what God has given us…challenging the Godly as being utterly wrong.
We are telling the God of all creation that what He created was a mistake and wrong.

So as we are left balancing the chasm of time,
keeping one foot in the past with one foot in the future,
wondering what the past has to do with the now, Rydell reminds us that
those who wish to dominate do so by convincing others what it is they are to
both think and believe to be truth….

But we must always remember from whence comes our Truth….

“The danger of taking a one-sided perspective on the Nazi’s relationship to
knowledge is that it risks obscuring something even more dangerous:
The desire of totalitarian ideology to rule not only over people but also their
thoughts.

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory,
are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory,
which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:18

The Resistance

“Resistance is the protest of those who hope,
and hope is the feast of the people who resist”
Jürgen Moltmann

(archived photo of French Resistance fighters)

If you know anything of the history of World War II, you are most likely familiar with the
role ‘The Resistance’ played in helping to defeat Hitler and his raging Nazi machine.

There were many resistance groups scattered across occupied Europe during those
dark days of Hitler’s unrelenting march toward total European control…

There were those in Rome, working behind the walls of St Peter’s under the watchful eye
of Pope Pius XII…
Just as there were those deep within Germany herself working precariously
within dangerous clandestine shadows to sabotage the Nazi juggernaut…

But the most notable group of partisans were those brave men and women of the French Resistance.
Those everyday citizens who risked everything, which was most often their lives,
as well as the lives of those they loved, all in hopes of undermining Germany’s
control of France and the ever advancing deadly reach westward.

I suppose it is fitting to actually call their actions a true form of guerrilla warfare…
As countless secret codes, messages and Allied information was ferried in and out,
deep from behind and within the enemy lines of the occupied nation.
Explosives, used to blow up bridges and railways, in hopes of cutting supply lines,
were a constant worry for advancing Nazi troops as this secret army of ever hopeful citizens
was key to helping keep hope alive globally…
Hope that all was not truly lost.

Hope…
Alive…

I often feel as if I have become a fighting member of a new resistance movement…
As the growing secularization of Western Civilization marches ever wider,
tightening its grasp and choke hold on the very foundation of our Judaeo Christian faith
and of the very real concept of humanity and morality…

The powers that be, those who work to rewrite Truth, while pointing deadly accusatory
fingers at those who still cling to that Truth,
mark those who remain steadfast in the love and knowledge of the Word of God
and of the Resurrection of His son as…
intolerant, as well as lacking the intelligence to jump on the current trend for
the quickly growing progressive Esprit de Corps.

Backwards fairtalists who live in the dark of Commandments, Covenants and pure make believe
is what we are being labeled as we are met with growing ridicule and condemnation.

We are being sold out by our leaders as they quickly label us as
intolerant, bigoted, xenophobic or simply deplorable ignorant rednecks…
as they try to sell the world a hopeless bag of goods disguised as an
all inclusive pie in the sky…
for they tout that each individual is who they are and whatever that may be
is perfectly great…

Does it matter that you look in the mirror and great and happiness, and contentment
and even satisfaction is not necessarily looking back…?

Our entertainment industry spews out raunchy and lewd innuendos as artistic,
comedic, current and trendy….
while we are mocked for finding it less then humorous…

Our news media has mastered the art of spin in hopes that no one
will be able to really sort fact from fiction…
as we are scorned for attempting to point out the Truth….

Yet Hope does remain…
For the Word of God remains…

For the Word of God cannot,
will not
nor will it ever be silenced…

For in that never-ending Hope is rooted in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ…

May we, who are called to the Resistance continue to fight the good fight
as we each become a member of God’s rebellion against this culture of Death….

The resurrection faith is not proved true by means of historical evidence,
or only in the next world.
It is proved here and now, through the courage for revolt,
the protest against deadly powers, and the self-giving of men and women for the victory of life.
It is impossible to talk convincingly about Christ’s resurrection without
participating in the movement of the Spirit “who descends on all flesh” to quicken it.
This movement of the Spirit is the driving “liberation movement,”
for it is the process whereby the world is recreated.

So resurrection means rebirth out of impotence and indolence to “the living hope.”
And today “living hope” means a passion for life, and a lived protest against death.

Christ’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s rebellion.
That rebellion is still going on in the Spirit of hope, and will be complete when, together with death, “every rule and every authority and power” is at last abolished (I Cor. 15_24)

“I didn’t find Christ, he found me.”

Jürgen Moltmann

ruffled feathers

It is the character of a brave and resolute man not to be ruffled by adversity
and not to desert his post.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

(time for molting / a cardinal looking worse for the wear /Julie Cook / 2016)

Now is the time for the Faithful to be both brave and resolute…
for doubt and complacency have blanketed reality.

No longer do we know what is truth or fallacy…
As loud voices are vying for supremacy.

But we have been warned, long before now, that false prophets will abound.
There will be those who come and go offering promises that can’t be kept.
As we’ve been lulled into ignoring honesty

We’ve readily traded Truth for the satisfaction of self…
while the masses have not a clue.

There is neither time nor season to waste…
The stage is set, the events have begun,
yet everyone is too busy posing for the selfies of the egocentric.

Speak up you who hold the Faith.
Stand firm and hold your ground….
Because if you don’t, no one else will…
as all will have been for naught…

You don’t think so?
You don’t agree?
You don’t wish to be an alarmist?
You don’t want to appear intolerant, ignorant or uninformed…

Trouble is…
you don’t have the time to wait and wonder if…

How long will you lie there, you sluggard?
When will you get up from your sleep?
Proverbs 6:9