What Would Digital Publius Do?

I have the occasion to engage in apologetical discussions pertaining to the Christian faith with a wide variety of anti-Christian antagonists — Muslims, witches, atheists. As a Christian apologist, one argument you are sure to come up against, no matter the persuasion of the person you are dealing with, is the reliability of the Holy Bible.

They all claim one or all of the following, without fail, the Holy Bible:

1) is not divine in origin, but rather the work of men;

2) is open to a wide range of interpretations with no Biblical view able to claim preeminence above the next;

3) despite an individual’s belief in the Holy Bible’s divine or mundane source or sources, it has been tampered with by unscrupulous men bent on using the text to further their own ambitions; for this reason, the Bible matters little today.

For the purposes of this article, I will focus on claim number three. This particular claim has always been the most amusing to me, as it is by far the silliest and easiest to overturn. Which brings us to the title of this article – “What Would Digital Publius Do?”

In keeping with the idea of man placing his own wisdom and morality above God's I am forced to ask the question, What would I do if I were an unscrupulous man bent on using the Biblical text to further my own ambitions? What would I change in the Holy Bible to help me meet that end? Well I sure as heck would do a better job than those who came before me!

If I were a powerful person capable of effecting changes to the Bible, given my natural predilection for attractive women, I’m fairly certain I would do away with the whole one man one woman thing and all those pesky rules eschewing adultery and fornication. Just being honest here!

I  would certainly make it possible for powerful men like myself to be exempt from such restrictions, if not the hoi poloi. There would have to be some revelation given so at least I could do my thing!

This is the sort of thing we do find in extra-Biblical cults and false religions. Generally when someone wants to use “religion” to grasp power, they have their own revelation or “thus sayeth the Lord” moment. They don’t change the Bible, they change the brand. That's how the world got the Book of Mormon, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and the Qur'an to name a few!

The problem in changing the Holy Bible is people would notice, even way back in the 4th century, the time most Bible critics point to when they make these assertions. But if you start your own brand, you’re good. You just claim that God is still in the revelation business and you are the new relay!

Liberalism, by it’s very nature, abhors rules against the causes they want to champion. The leftists don’t like phrases like “Congress shall make no law...” any more than they like “Thou shalt not...” No man does really.

The difference is in an individuals heart and discipline to overcome our baser instincts and accept what God wants to teach man about how we should live and treat others. Let me give you an example of liberal thinking. Aldous Huxley, the Author of “Brave New World”, makes a rather revelatory statement when rationalizing his acceptance of the idea of Darwinian evolution and the meaninglessness of life as had his grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley (who was known as Darwin’s bulldog):

“I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption... The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do…. For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom..” Aldous Huxley, “Confession of a Professed Atheist,” Report: Perspective on the News, vol. 3 (June 1966), p. 19. From an article by Helming, “An Interview with God.”

It’s simple really; rebellion against God can always be summed up as man’s intrinsic selfish pursuit of self-gratification and expedience.

The Holy Bible contemporaneously still looks down on the sort of behavior that would aid in oppressing others for selfish reasons. It has still got a bunch of those troublesome “Thou shalt not's” giving fits to Huxley and his like-minded latter day liberals and that humanists of every kind find so distasteful. In fact, the Bible has a distressing habit of teaching service to others as the only true path to greatness.

“And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest. And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth.”  Luke 22:24-27

Yep, that’s the kind of passage from Jesus Christ that would have to go! Not good if you are all about selfish power grabs and controlling masses with liturgical opiates. Yet it is still there! How do you, as a king, put this teaching to work placing yourself above other men, even above God when Christ, Himself says, “I am here among you serving you”?

No, my friends, when man seeks to abrogate the Living Word of God, he does it from the outside, by casting aspersions on the Holy Bible and placing human wisdom above what was revealed to man in Scripture. You don’t change God’s Word, you reject it!

You conform God to your idea of what He should be outside of the framework of who God says He is in His written Word. People reject not just the Bible, but also the Holy God of the Holy Bible. There are scads of people, like President Obama who say they believe in God—yet you find precious few who actually believe God!

This is why President Obama can claim to be a Christian, yet the White House says the President is “grappling” with his personal views on gay marriage as Obama orders the United States Justice Department to stop defending the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, the very law of the land defining marriage as a legal state consisting of one man and one woman in holy matrimony.

Is President Obama less powerful than the kings and leaders of old? Can’t the President do something about this outdated Bible our laws are based on? Well, the Democrats and the rest of the liberal left have been doing just that for decades now. The leftists have eliminated the Bible's influence in American society as much as they possibly can.

You don’t have to change the Holy Bible - just undermine it! God says He knew you in the womb, my President says that’s “above my pay grade”! God says marriage is defined as one man, one woman, my President says lets ‘grapple” with that idea!

Change the Bible? Why bother? Every time a King or President casts doubt on God’s wisdom by overturning the clear teachings of Scripture on matters of marriage and the like, does he have to literally take out a Sharpie and start redacting the Holy Bible? Of course not, especially when President Obama's own Democrat Party has put in the time and legislation to make sure that many don’t know what the Bible says to begin with — let alone feeling any accountability to the One who wrote it!

Digital Publius

Weird Politics!

 

Irish comedian Dylan Moran does a bit about Americans where he says something to the effect of “American imperialism is insidious!” He says that America targets some war-torn poverty stricken corner of the globe that has oil or chocolate or whatever it is we want, and all the natives get mad and begin to meet.

So they gather together in some bombed-out cafe or something to foment, “What are we going to do about the Yankee, American imperialist pig dogs? They come in here, they take our stuff...” Meanwhile — while these people are talking— America very, very gradually builds a Starbucks around them! They get addicted to lattes, lose the will to fight, and then they turn into Americans.

Apart from Moran’s bit being absolutely hilarious, the one thing he has manifestly right, is that once people get a taste of what a free nation has to offer, they generally want more. That is, with the possible exception of the American extreme left. Many liberals, who have the ability to have it all by virtue of being born in the freest nation on earth, would rather deconstruct the Starbucks and see America become a giant bombed-out cafe.

With the Middle Eastern nations tumbling like so many dominoes in an exhibition of alleged democratic fervor are squaring off against oppressive oligarchies and dictators, the American left seeks to hitch a ride on the bandwagon of civil unrest — not with an eye towards preserving or defending the democratic process responsible for making our republic the envy of the world, but in decidedly un-democratic displays of sore-headed defiance.

You have leftists calling for a renewal of hard left rhetoric, even resuscitating the Weather Underground’s halcyon call for “Days of Rage!”, calling for “an end to American capitalism and imperialism.”

All this while the truly oppressed Middle Easterners — who serve as the titular inspiration for the homegrown anti-American, capitalism eschewing extreme liberals — are unable to get their stories out via the state controlled media. So, they turned to Twitter, Facebook and other web-based communication media.

Web entities like Facebook and Twitter, even foreign grown applications like Skype, indeed the very internet itself, would not exist apart from the Yankee capitalism the liberals hate. Not to mention the devices they use to access them. This fact seems to elude their mushy brains as the left uses the web with cheerful abandon to spread the word about their planned hissy fits.

It’s because they don’t think; the liberals are like toddlers who have no idea that mommy and daddy have to work to buy the juicy boxes they only take one sip out of before using the rest to make the sand red in their sandboxes. Unfortunately, these toddlers are trying to make the country red.

As the people in the Middle East rise up to have the right to put this issue or that to the vote, the Democrat Party obversely does all it can to ensure democracy doesn’t happen if it involves an issue they don’t like. Whether it’s states like California working to overturn or block passage of Defense of Marriage acts or school vouchers, state by state, they will work feverishly either not to vote or block anyone else from voting at all.

The 60’s radicals were born of a time of rebellion with heroes like James Dean and Marlon Brando representing a counter culture fueled by some of the most powerful voices in rock and roll history — causes born in the crucible of the civil rights movement and the conflicts in South East Asia. They rebelled against a society whose politicians may have danced the Lindy Hop, and most certainly danced to Boogie Woogie.

Today's politicians are often my age, as are those who foment unrest. We were born in the latter days of the Baby Boom, and the early days of Generation X. The MTV generation! So, it’s no wonder that many of my generation who enter politics are modern day rebels, viewing the world like a John Hughes film.

Case in point: The legislature in the state of Wisconsin was slated to vote on an anti-union bill Thursday, the 17th of February, aimed at ending unions' collective bargaining rights. This is a Republican sponsored bill! The Wisconsin Republicans enjoy a 19 seat majority in the 33 seat Senate, so the bill would pass with flying colors.

In Wisconsin, there can be no vote in the Senate unless there is at least one member present from the two parties. So what do the Democrats do? They pull a Ferris Bueller and take the day off!

Rather than take their medicine, the Democrats (tucked snuggly in the hip pocket of the unions) act like taciturn teenagers and disappear. In Wisconsin, they can compel a vote so the Democrat Senators not only didn’t show up, they literally left town — all 14 of them! In an effort to emulate their hero, they ended up at some resort in Illinois, Ferris’ home state.

There is not a lot of faith in democracy in the Democrat party! Real mature dude!

When things don’t go their way the Democrats would rather job the system like Ferris, which is in stark contrast to the conduct of the U.S. Congressional Republicans who defiantly stood for their principles and showed up to vote as the liberals gleefully slammed through Obamacare on a totally partisan vote.

In Hawaii, state Senator Sam Slom is the sole Republican in the 25 seat Hawaiian Senate. Every vote pretty much ends in a 24 to 1 decision, but Senator Slom shows up to cast that one vote. That is faith in the system!

The problem is, too many Democrats see Republicans as “Chet Donnelly”, Wyatt’s bully of a big brother in “Weird Science”, while seeing themselves as Breakfast Club member “John Bender” types, raging against everything and everyone, content to explain away immature, bad behavior because they had it tough. Ever on the prowl to subvert the good kids to bring them down to their level rather than rising to the level of the high acheivers.

The latter John Bender trait was indicative of the behavior displayed by some 1000 Madison Wisconsin School teachers who called in sick so they could join the protestors surrounding the state capitol to prevent the union vote. It’s all about the kids right? Well...except when they are trying to mess with my union.

Turns out that even though the students had no idea what they were protesting some of those teachers actually took students out of class to help in the protest. It seems some of these students were away from schools with teachers sans obligatory permission slips from parents. Your tax dollars at work?

Rest assured, if my kids were in that mob absent from school without my say so--it would not be pretty!

A message to the Democrat Party: in order to have democracy, you have to mix in some democracy, even when it doesn’t go your way. Otherwise, you may just want to go join the crowd the people are protesting against in Yemen, Bahrain and Egypt — they don’t want the people voting either!

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. I Corinthians 13:11

Digital Publius