Aspen: I never suggested that there is no polarity of ideology in the world. I made a statement about being frustrated that you appear to be unable or unwilling to define what or who the 'Left' are. In addition, recognizing polarity in our world does not correlate with polarity in the spirit world. However since you did bring up the subject of polarity in the spirit world, I would like to address the issue; it does not exist. If it did exist, Good vs. Evil would be equal forces, which is the definition of dualism. Christianity does not teach dualism - instead, Christianity teaches that God is Good and His creation was declared by Him to be good, as well. As Augustine rightly pointed out, it was humanity that introduced evil into God's creation - evil is simply a lesser or misused form of Good. It is not a force, instead evil has the same relationship to good as cold does to heat. Christ's death on the Cross brings us back towards perfection by re-establishing a relationship with Him through forgiveness.
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.’"(Mt 10:34:35) One would have to be diligently ignorant to go through the gospels and not see the clear message that there is adversarial relationship between God and Satan, between the people of God and those who hate God. From the same chapter, "They will hate you because of me." Yes, there clearly is a polarization and your mischaracterization of that as dualism has no merit. I never claimed the ying-yang philosophy you are referring to by which good and evil share equal presence and none can dominate over the other; a decidedly unchristian doctrine. You're erecting straw arguments.
Aspen: The suggestion that I may be embracing learned ignorance, aside; your willingness to make generalizations about the polarity of opinion (seems to me, all worldly polarity is manufactured and perpetuated by the media) only confirms that you have bought into the very worldly system you are trying to warn everyone about.
It's absurd to blame the media for a phenomenon that exists apart from the media. People themselves are polarized which is evident by having conversations with them without ever turning on a television. It's not to say people agree on everything, but there is an undeniable gravity by which people go to one side or the other and hold many views in common, a phenomenon I alluded to just now in the gospels. It's clear that you want to ignore it, just as it's clear you read the Bible in redacted form so your ideology is preserved. That's truly sad.
Aspen: I'm glad you believe they are so obvious to distinguish from all the good people out there.....so, why is it so difficult for you to provide me with examples of the members of this group? Where you see a black and white distinction, I see people on a continuum; all have a variety of ideas and opinions, which they may feel strongly about or not so much.
That's not the least bit justified. I have cited numerous examples, all of which you dismiss as anomalies. Astronomers hunt for planets and find them in distant space not by actually seeing the planet, but by gaging its effect on the sun, the wobble created by its gravity. By the same notion, Jesus says that we cannot see the wind, but we see the effects of the wind. You seem to be in a position of denying the wind and consigning the swaying of trees to mere coincidence. It takes studious effort to do that.
2. I do not believe there is a 'war on Christianity' - that phrase is a sound bite from FoxNews, which loves to incite fear by crying 'war' whenever they encounter people with different ideas.
Then you don't believe what you read in the Bible. Of course there's a war on Christianity as long as Satan exists. There has been a war on Christianity ever since its inception starting with outright persecution, followed by heretical doctrines, gnostic written works, and breakaway factions such as the schism of 1054 and the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. All of this is evidence of evil at work militating against the Church, and the personification of that evil is Satan.
Aspen: Women were considered the property of their husbands across the ancient world. Abraham had the right to kill his son because Issac was his property; Job's wives and children were listed with his livestock because they were all considered his property; women in the ancient world (except in Rome) did not have the right to divorce their husbands; women did not have the right to vote in our own country until the last century. Domestic violence laws were nonexistent until the sixties - and they were not popular among men who believed that domestic violence was a private matter. Just very fact that Jesus spoke to women was considered scandalous. Before the last century, women everywhere were considered second class citizens at best, property of men at worst.
Now you're foraging for evidence to buttress your moribund argument. We were discussing the difference between the treatment of women by Christianity and that by Muslims. Going to ancient Canaanite culture to make your point is just sloppy and irrelevant, so too are the laws by Greko-Roman jurisprudence that the Church has no power over. You're grasping at straws and failing miserably to address the specific ways I cited that women have been treated in Muslim dominated countries both today and throughout it's wretched history. You've certainly lost this one.
Aspen: I never said you made that statement - I was illustrating my point. My point, once again, is that we are our own worst enemy. Sure Satan is a powerful being, but he is only a creation, just like we are. He is not omnipotent, omnipresent, or omniscient - he does not know us personally, nor can he read our minds. Yes, he can derail us by tempting us with the standard fair, but how challenging is that? Most people are duped into spreading money based on a favorite commercial! I can tempt my dogs with the mere tone of my voice. Do you really think we could hold the attention of such a powerful being for centuries? As if we are any challenge at all....lol. The real battle we face is resisting the tendency to be selfish and instead placing our faith in God, believing that He loves us, which leads us on to love outwardly rather than selfishly. Satan and the angels that followed him, refused to fight the urge to be selfish and instead embraced it. I pray that I will not follow their example.
I think you're watering down exactly what Satan is capable of and the dominions he controls. While it's true that all he can do is deceive, his deception manifests itself in the most horrific acts of men. Satan holds sway over the nations (Lk 4:6, Rev 20:8) and that kind of power cannot be dismissed as inept.
Aspen: On the contrary, Paul told the Athenians that the unknown god they were worshipping was the true God of creation - if he believed that the unknown god was actually satan, he lied. I do not believe Paul lied. Acts 17:22-23
Paul said that the one idol addressed to the unknown god was unwittingly dedicated to God, but that has no bearing on the other idols he saw that were dedicated to specific deities. To say that idolatry doesn't cause the prostration of men to Satan is to say that Baal and all the idolatry in the Old Testament is neutral and unimpeachable. Idolatry in the Old Testament lead to the breakdown of society, to the point where children were cast into the fires of Molech and wars were caused to perpetuate one culture's idol over another as was the case with Antiochus Epiphanes. Your argument that Paul didn't believe all the dedicated idols were demonic is utterly unjustifiable.
Aspen: I said the word Allah means God. It means God in Arabic. Sorry if that bothers you - it is a fact. Palestinian Christians pray to Allah. How would you like it if you spoke Arabic and a Christian told you about God, but you could not call Him God because you spoke a language where God means Allah? Based on your post, you sure have a small image of God (if it is not God) and a big image of Satan (he is Satan by default).
You're arguing linguistics over form. Regardless of what word is used for God in the Middle East, the "allah" of the Koran is a very different deity than God almighty of the Christians and Jews and he bears very different characteristics. The Muslims' "allah" has no son, is capable of evil, is not omnipotent, and more importantly has ordered the killing of thousands of Jews at Mecca and Medina, the sacking of Constantinople, and the Moorish aggression. All these acts are attributed to the Muslim "allah" not the Allah worshipped by Palestinian Christians. Those of us who know who God really is will more readily attribute these attributes to Satan and categorically reject associating them with God.
Aspen: Really? I think someone should have let John Paul II and Pope Francis know - and somebody better change the current catechism.
In his weekly general audience in late May of 1999, Pope John Paul II
addressed Muslims in a series discussing "interreligious dialog." He
quotes from the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church n. 841 which
states, "... together with us they (Muslims) adore the one, merciful,
God."
Left leaning Catholics have misinterpreted this over and over, reading into it what can't be. The whole statement says that they "profess" to hold the faith of Abraham and it lends no truth to their error. Moreover, I don't contend against the notion that some Muslims really do worship the same God as I do, evidenced by their works, being trained in the ways of grace, and rejecting violence and terrorism. This is not at loggerheads with my contention that the god of Islam is in fact Satan; even if some Muslims part ways with the demonic aspects of Islam, and therefore are unwittingly alienated from the god of Islam.
Aspen: I am sorry you are viewing my posts as uncharitable. I do not perceive you as an enemy. I simply have a different perspective than you do and I am sharing it. I thought you were interested in a discussion? My last point is that America has been moving towards Facism ever since Nixon took office - before Nixon, Lynden Johnson continued and expanded the policies of Rooselvet, which promoted a much more socialist approach - some have prejoritively referred to it as building a 'nanny state'. So here is the disconnect for me, we live in a country that has deregulated, to the cultures detriment, many of the essential services that we rely on to thrive as a people - I listed a few of them in my last post; yet, the media seems to be fixated on the idea that Obama is a communist. This is a perfect example of cognitive dissidence. Also, I am not the person that is trying to fit people into a category - after our conversation, I will view you as a person with different ideas than me. On the contrary, I have a feeling that you will lump me into the category of the Left, which is evil - or at best you will see me as uneducated or brainwashed.
I think the same misunderstanding applies to both your situation and that of Islam. Islam is evil, but that doesn't make all Muslims evil. The American Left is evil, but that doesn't make everyone who holds Leftist views evil. I've made this clear and fecklessly so, as it appears.
Aspen: The Pope believes in global warming, is he one of the members of the Left?
The Pope is not infallible in the opinions he holds and never has been and by the way, the Catholic Church is not a cult to pledge lockstep allegiance to the Pope in his every opinion. However, before enlisting the Pope in the global warming hoax, you should consider that no Pope will ever support higher taxes, higher regulations, or anything else that most dramatically affects the poorest people. To subjugate the poor to the interests of radical environmentalism is abhorrent at best. Or as former Pope Benedict said: "There exists a certain reciprocity: as we care for creation, we realize that God, through creation, cares for us. On the other hand, a correct understanding of the relationship between man and the environment will not end by absolutizing nature or by considering it more important than the human person." There is much in the global warming cult and radical environmentalism in general that the Pope will never favor or support.
Aspen: The phrase 'abortion on demand' is another sound bite - there is no law called abortion on demand. It is equivalent to relabeling the estate tax as 'death tax' and claiming that Obama's medical plan is trying to kill grandma. It is all apart of the fear mongering and propaganda, which is part of the worldliness you are trying to warn us all about. Yes, abortion is a sin and it is a horror, but criminalizing it solves nothing. The church needs to fight abortion by working to change the terrible adoption laws, the fostercare system and, possibly offering to provide full care for mothers and infants. If we provide a fantastic alternative, why would anyone choose to kill their infant?
You're like many Left leaning Catholics who are "pro life lite" and have no real commitment to ending abortion on demand; even to the point of denying that there is such a system by which innocent human lives can be whimsically snuffed out (on demand). It isn't the position of the Catholic Church to keep abortion legal, and in fact it's more pointedly the position of the RCC that governments act to protect the innocent. You're much like Nancy Pelosi who was admonished by the Pope for having the same viewpoint that leaves intact the systematic genocide of millions of unborn children through feigned symbolic gestures, but political and legislative indifference.
Moreover, you don't actually believe that it's a "horror" as you say, or that it is even murder. I'm used to contending with pro-abortionists pretending to be pro-life. Our actions follow our truest convictions and if we believe that abortion is the wrongful taking of innocent life, then we act in every way to protect that life, and prevail upon social policy to treat it as murder no different than the murder of any other human being. You pay lip service to the pro life movement, but you act in such way to ensure that this evil will continue. This is precisely why it's wrong for Catholics, or Christians of any stripe, to be Leftist or in any way to compromise with the evils of the American Left. By doing so, you acquiesce. to a silent holocaust while wrongfully absolving yourself of any involvement.
Aspen: I do not mean this as an insult, but this statement could not be anymore Protestant! The individual? Private property? Where is the individual in corporal worship? Where is the individual in the Body of Christ? Catholics find their identity in Christ! Where is private property in the monastery? Sorry, but we totally disagree on this line of reasoning - America was built on Enlightenment/Masonic ideals, not Christianity. Most of the Founding Fathers were Deists and that is about as fringe Protestant as it gets.
You are making one of the most common mistakes that Christians make, conflating the Kingdom of Heaven with the kingdoms of men. Rather than lay out my customary lecture about how Jesus labored to separate the prerogatives of the state from that of heaven, I'll simply state that the teachings that apply specifically to the religious life cannot be applied concurrently to the way men are governed. Willing communal living within a Christian body, particularly under persecution as was the Church of Acts is not an excuse to apply the involuntary deprivation of political freedom, personal property, and the rights of the individual. Such actions are nothing more than coveteousness and theft sanctimoniously white washed. The use of religion as justification to oppress people in their homes and possessions is evil.
Private property is more of a burden than a blessing. All we need are the basics. Radical individualism is one of the main attributes of the damned. Isolation from the Body, isolation from God; all within the horror of utter darkness and loneliness.
If this were just your personal opinion, I would have no problem with it. But because I believe you would like to see this viewpoint prevail as a matter of social policy, I have a BIG problem with it.
Aspen: Apparently, they did not anticipate what the government would become because they never advocated for the rights of minorities or nonlandowners. They also never advocated for a static constitution - they expected it to grow with the times. The FF were not omnipotent - the were just intelligent men.
The "living Constitution" is a typical Left wing lie. The framers and ratifiers of the Constitution had only one mode by which it could be expanded, altered, or "modernized" and that's through the amendment process. They made it intentionally difficult to prevent the very Leftist runarounds we see happening today.
"George Washington has been quoted as saying the Constitution was an imperfect product, made more perfect by the ability to amend it. The Founding Fathers anticipated that changes to the Constitution would be necessary with changing times and established a process for amending it in Article V of that document. In earlier years, no deadline was imposed for an amendment to wind its way through the states. For example, the 27th amendment was proposed in 1789 and only ratified in 1992, 203 years later!"
But the Constitution isn't being amended, it's being bypassed by both Democrats and Republicans.
Aspen: Why does the truth need defending by you? Jesus never call His disciples to go out and baptize and defend the truth......in fact, He rightly corrected the Pharisees when they tried to trap Him by stating 'why do you call me good, only God is good'; meaning, you have no idea what is Good, nor any authority to proclaim anything good - only God understands good and evil. We are called by Christ for one thing - loving unselfishly - this is what we were created to do and is therefore perfection.
Then according to you, the Creeds were misguided and Cardinal Newman's life was a complete waste. Apparently truth doesn't matter. What the hell, let's get rid of the doctrine of the Trinity, the canon of scripture, and the Magisterium of the Church! Did you just seriously say that I have no duty to defend the truth? That just came at me from another planet, so foreign is it to my thinking, and more importantly, to Christian piety.
