I was watching clips from the funeral of the late Cleveland congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs-Jones this morning when another black and female member of the House of Representatives spoke about how, guided by the spirit, Tubbs-Jones worked to build God’s Kingdom on earth (or something along those lines). Now, I have no doubt that Ms. Tubbs-Jones did some good things in her lifetime of elected office, but I always wince when I hear people equate partisan political activity (and she was thoroughly partisan) with God’s Kingdom, especially ones with a radical pro-abortion message.
Although the Kingdom’s has an element of “at hand” and certainly the message of Christ impels us to work for justice and charity, I find that many on the left and right like to co-opt the Kingdom for their own partisan causes. Thus, renewing the endangered species act or lowering taxes becomes a religious issue. These individuals often forget that the Kingdom also has a “not yet” component, one that will only be accomplished at the second coming of Jesus Christ, not by government legislation. Once again, it seems that modern American Christians are lacking in eschatalogical perspective, which leads to comments like the one at the Tubbs-Jones funeral and, in a sense, the general Obama hysteria among the social justice crowd.
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September 1, 2008 at 11:40 am
Jonathan,
The confusion of the Kingdom of God with the present systems of Man (especially among Americans) comes from liberal Protestantism. Having (quite successfully) excised the supernatural from Christianity and having reduced God to a vague and wholly impotent and benign spiritual Greater Something, and having reduced the Gospel of Our Lord to social welfare and “feel-good-ism”, what other result could there be? Human beings (and there causes) become the measure of all things.
I’ve come to realize that, for all intents and purposes, “Christianity” in America (especially in its mainstream Protestant versions) is really just man-centered, practical atheism. “God” and “the Kingdom” become buzzwords used to bolster the system, social constructs etc. of the individual or the party or the special interest group.
September 1, 2008 at 11:41 am
Jonathan,
The confusion of the Kingdom of God with the present systems of Man (especially among Americans) comes from liberal Protestantism. Having (quite successfully) excised the supernatural from Christianity and having reduced God to a vague and wholly impotent and benign spiritual Greater Something, and having reduced the Gospel of Our Lord to social welfare and “feel-good-ism”, what other result could there be? Human beings (and their causes) become the measure of all things.
I’ve come to realize that, for all intents and purposes, “Christianity” in America (especially in its mainstream Protestant versions) is really just man-centered, practical atheism. “God” and “the Kingdom” become buzzwords used to bolster the system, social constructs etc. of the individual or the party or the special interest group.
September 5, 2008 at 1:29 am
O.K. Abortion “all this dumb S–t has gone on too long”:
All animals, irrelevant of type, possess ‘LIFE’, down to the tiniest little bugs, ‘all God’s living creatures’ (including the ones we kill by the million on our various car journeys). Those small fender incarcerated creatures are of probable size and weight to the smallest conceived human embryos! SO.., what makes a human being special, what separates us from those multitude of other small creatures?(apart from life)
We are lead to believe that the separation point between us humans and other creatures is a God given gift, “soul”, defined simplistically:
A connection point between animal and spirit, we are the creatures chosen by God to unite worlds, we have the capacity to rise beyond our base animal natures and form a bridge to the world of spirit. Simply put, the soul exists as a demarcation of boundaries between animal and spirit – a special journey represented by the crucifixion and resurrection – we sacrifice our animal bodies for the life of the spirit.
So, so far, life is a prerequisite of all life on earth, but what we represent as human beings is a creature possessing life and a soul. (O.K. Life is cheap, but the individual growth of a soul is beyond all price – reserved, I’m afraid, for those few creatures tested in this world).
O.K., First of all life is not special, human life as demarcated from animal life is not special, Why the hell should it be? Why the hell is the pro-life debate centered around life? We are all mass murderers! (Remember our car fenders)
So lets move on to soul..:
Our capacity to rise to the life of the spirit depends on our ability to recognize our spiritual potential; this is a process of individual growth, learning and development. Certainly not God-given (remember, we are fallen beings – a touch presumptuous to assume otherwise), we in our base state are animals…
Our barest beginnings a small lump of flesh? Yes this contains the potential of a life lived, but also the potential of a life unlived!
O.K., as a Christian Mystic, I figure I should state it as it is for the record:
Potential life in its future state (the eventual development of an embryo), is represented by the ‘weight of future existence’. The weight of future existence is measured by ‘life lived’, and this represents the potential for spiritual development (soul development). If the future weight of a ‘life lead’ does not exist (terminated pregnency), all you have is a lump of meat! The balance swings that sweetly I’m afraid…. So ignore the fawning sentimentalists, and consider the facts..
September 5, 2008 at 10:25 am
Clive:
Thank you for demonstrating the lengths of illogic one must go to if they try be a religious, moral person while denying an elementary part of natural law and Christian charity.
This way leads to madness.
September 5, 2008 at 1:23 pm
What ever happened to divine law? Is the natural law you talk about human law (Including heathen law)? If so this is a clear foundation of political thinking in relation to religious belief - that belief that cannot pass beyond reason, and is based on sentiment over spiritual understanding.
Surely madness is contained in an unquestioning acceptance of natural law since a fundamental belief of Christianity is that our place in this world is distinctly unnatural.
September 5, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Clive:
I took the divine law into account when I mentioned “Christian charity.” I saw nothing in the ideas in your initial comment that conformed to that.
The bottom line is this: if there is any doubt whether your view about “mounds of flesh” and humanity = potential is correct (and I have a truckload of doubt about that), then at the very best we can say is one MIGHT NOT be committing homicide by having or performing an abortion. If there is any doubt that the Catholic view is correct, then having or performing an abortion MIGHT be committing homicide.
You would have to be mad to not understand which “might” is more just.
I think this issue is one about which contemporary society is literally insane. Like the institution of slavery in the United States, otherwise moral, religious people made excuses because the enslaved blacks were less human (at least 2/5ths less, as they did the math back then) or less fit for freedom than whites. They had to twist the moral law that way because they KNEW it was wrong to do that to fully human beings. They chose to ignore this moral fact because it was socially and economically inconvenient.
It was madness then when the oppressed were of another race and it’s madness now when the oppressed are the unborn.
September 5, 2008 at 9:18 pm
In the world of the spirit the concept of time and therefore ideas of potential do not exist, what will be ‘is already’. From a human perspective, the will to live and fulfill our individual destiny (or potential) is our God given path mediated by our conscience, that veil, or hand covering the face in the expulsion from paradise. We meet the challenge of what we become and are already in the spiritual world.
Simply put, if an embryo does not survive (and a lot of fetuses are aborted naturally) then that life (in terms of the animal shudder) is not! Not actually very complicated.
What confuses the issue greatly, is the Western Worlds unholy emphasis on Individuality. From the standpoint of spiritual growth and understanding spiritual matters, it very quickly becomes abundantly clear that the individual or ego-centric view of the world has little meaning. Overlaying individual rights and “Individual” Spiritual rights onto a fetus is laughable – a ‘life’ (as animal), or with spiritual potential, is just absorbed back into the spirit and earth. God is not actually smacking our hand over this, it simply does not matter!
September 6, 2008 at 11:26 am
Clive,
All your blathering and sophistry still does not alter the fact that…Rome has spoken, the matter is settled. No abortion. End of story.
September 6, 2008 at 12:18 pm
So a political institution wins the day!
September 6, 2008 at 6:37 pm
No, the VICAR OF CHRIST wins the day…any other opinion is heresy.
September 6, 2008 at 9:31 pm
God told me that he’s not too keen on the guy, says he’s wondering how gave him that kind of authority….
September 26, 2008 at 6:34 pm
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