Saturday, August 29, 2009

The God of Children


“There’s none can save you now, missy,” Mullins hissed jeeringly.
“There’s one,” replied the figure.
“Who’s that?”
“Peter Pan the avenger!” came the terrible answer; and as he spoke Peter flung off his cloak. Then they all knew who ‘twas that had been undoing them in the cabin, and twice Hook essayed to speak and twice he failed. In that frightful moment I think his fierce heart broke.

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I saw the interview which mad-dog, liberal Rachel Maddow did with Frank Schaeffer, the son of the late Francis Schaeffer. Frank Schaeffer, formerly a fundamentalist, then a member of the Orthodox Church, and now a mad-dog liberal himself, condemned his father for equating abortionists with Hitler and asserted his support for The Obama and pro-choice mad-dogs of liberaldom. Despite his detestation of Christian values, Schaeffer still asserted his fervent belief in all the tenets of Christianity. Is it possible that a man could hold the views expressed by Frank Schaeffer and still be a Christian? No, it is not. We can say with absolute certainty that Frank Schaeffer is not a Christian. We can say that Frank Schaeffer has faith in an intellectual construct that he calls Christianity, but this is different from a faith in Christ.

P. C. Wren can help us understand the difference between faith in an intellectual construct and faith in a person. In his novel Beau Geste, the three Geste brothers all join the foreign legion to cover up what appears to be a theft by one of the brothers of the ‘Blue Water’ diamond from the family estate. At no time, despite compelling evidence to the contrary, do any of the brothers suspect the other brothers of any wrongdoing. They all think that either the other two brothers are guiltless of the theft or that the brother who took the Blue Water did so for noble reasons. And of course the brothers Geste are right. (1)

The Geste brothers have a faith that is deeper than an intellectual construct. Their faith is grounded in spirit and blood. When brothers are bound by those ties there is no need for a philosophy of brotherhood; the silken thread of sympathy is stronger than an ironclad syllogism.

The ancient Europeans knew Christ as the Geste brothers knew each other. Sin the European might, drift away from his brotherly father he might, but once having seen and felt the divine tenderness no European could fail to know His will and what He would have him do when facing life’s complexities. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a man to know God through the abstracted intellect. Let us stop debating with the likes of Frank Schaeffer, Billy Graham, and all professed Christians who claim that satanic liberalism comes from Christ. Such “Christians” have a faith, but it is not a faith derived from a spirit and blood connection to Jesus of Nazareth.

It is important to know that professed Christians who support liberalism are not Christian, because liberals have one passion, the desire to eradicate Christian Europeans. When we see the Frank Schaeffers standing with liberals, we know that we must protect our people and our faith against him just as we would against a Stalin or a Hitler.

St. Paul tells us that even if an angel from heaven were to come down and tell us something in contradiction to the teaching of the men connected to Christ in spirit and blood, we are not to believe them. (Gal. 1:6 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.) How can we call a pope like John XXIII, who forgave the barbarous torture and murder of his own people before the blood on the barbarians’ knives was dry, a Christian? How can we call Pope John Paul II, who regularly begged clemency for child-molesters and child-torturers, a Christian? And how can we call the black-worshipping pro-choice Frank Schaeffer a Christian?

Professed atheists such as Madeline Murray O'Hare are very rare, but intellectual atheists, those who worship their own abstraction of God, are legion. In fact, abstracted atheism is the religion of the modern European. And at the root of modern, abstracted atheism is intellectual pride. European man is suffering from the effect of a second fall. He is unable to accept that a true God would reveal His divinity through His humanity. Satan has once again appealed to man’s intellect (and the European Christian man was the only man Satan needed to worry about) in order to get the European to renounce Jesus of Nazareth. Satan got the European to believe that a human God was a lesser God.

A few years back I came across a book, written by one of Satan’s legion, which expressed in a nutshell modern man’s quest for an intellectual system as a substitute for God. The book was called Denial of the Soul and the author was M. Scott Peck. I read some reviews of the book, and I wondered if the reviewers and I had read the same book. The Publishers Weekly reviewer claimed Peck “camps firmly on Biblical grounds.” What Bible? It is true that Peck came out quite tentatively against euthanasia and in favor of the soul, but he concedes that he might change his views on euthanasia should he get a terminal, painful illness. And his belief in the soul is a type of Jungian belief in the over-soul. He refers to God as a “She” and rates traditionally religious people as lower on the evolutionary scale than liberal humanists. Peck, of course, places his own beliefs (a pastiche of Greek pantheism mixed with psychological Zen) at the top of the evolutionary ladder.

Pecks’s four stages of religious or spiritual development are these:
· Stage 1 - Chaotic, Antisocial. In this most primitive stage, people may appear either religious or secular, but either way, their belief system is profoundly superficial. It may be thought of as a stage of lawlessness.
· Stage 2 - Formal, Institutional. This is a stage of the ‘letter of the law’ in which religious fundamentalists (meaning most religious people) are to be found.
· Stage 3 – Skeptic, Individual. Here is where the majority of secularists are situated. People in this stage are usually scientific-minded, rational, moral, and humane. Their outlook is predominantly materialistic. They tend to be not only skeptical of the spiritual but uninterested in anything that cannot be proven.
· Stage 4 – Mystical, Communal. In this most mature stage of religious evelopment, which may be thought of as one of ‘the spirit of the law’, women and men are rational but do not make a fetish of rationalism. They have begun to doubt their own doubts. They feel deeply connected to an unseen order of things, although they cannot fully define it. They are comfortable with the mystery of the sacred.
Although Peck does use terms like ‘soul’ and ‘God’, he is, in Christian terms, an atheist. To quote:
“Although I consider myself a middle-of-the-road Christian, I do not believe in the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. It seems to me to confuse bodies and souls. They are not the same thing at all.”
There are some practical points in the book – for example, how to cope with illness and what painkilling drugs to use – that seem sound, but the underlying philosophy of this book is blasphemous and philosophically unsound. There is no real comfort in the face of our own sufferings and death outside of the traditional Christian faith, which Dr. Peck derides in the name of his new Dr. M. Scott Peck religion.

And outside of Christianity, there is no reason to be against euthanasia. In fact, if one believed what Peck believed, I would think one would be so depressed one would commit suicide.

If you are impressed by Karl Jung and Ralph Waldo Emerson – two men who tried to maintain Christian ethics while denying the transcendental truths of the Christian faith – you will be in tune with Dr. M. Scott Peck’s new interpretation of Christianity. But there is nothing really new under the sun, as the Preacher says. Mr. Peck’s beliefs are very close to those of the ancient Gnostics. The modern liberal thinks he is forging a brave new world, when in reality he is just a pygmy heretic spouting the cosmic blasphemies of his heretic progenitors.

It is always to a cosmic, impersonal force or an abstract, cosmic Christ that the liberal appeals. And this is why the New Age Christians are always allied with the barbarians of color. The barbarians also reject the God-Man and worship the impersonal gods of nature and the cosmos. The liberals frequently talk about compassion, but the most striking thing about their new world is the absence of compassion. We see this in the wholesale slaughter of the weakest members of the brave new world, the very young and the very old. Is this not the old paganism in a new, technocratic guise? Shall there be mercy for the destroyers of mercy? That will be up to the God of Mercy.

Leaving the ultimate disposition of souls to God we can and must make a judgment on the words and actions of the anti-Christian Christians like Frank Schaeffer. He has chosen to fly under Satan’s banner, and he should be dealt with as Peter Pan dealt with Captain Hook: “Hook or me this time!”

I vividly recall a time in my earlier twenties when I was chided by a professor for having a ‘Peter Pan complex’ because I refused to ‘grow up’ and adopt a ‘realistic, grown-up religion’ instead of the religion of Christ. My inarticulate answer was that if I had to abandon Christ in order to grow up, I preferred to remain a child. But then every European I admire, Shakespeare, Scott, Le Fanu, had the faith of a child. I’ll stay with them and their God, come dungeon, fire, and sword.+
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(1)
My most dear and admired Aunt Patricia,

When you get this, I shall be dead, and when you have read it I shall be forgiven, I hope, for I did what I thought was best, and what would, in a small measure, repay you for some of your great goodness to me and my brothers.

My dear Aunt, I knew you had sold the ‘Blue Water’ to the Maharajah (for the benefit of the tenants and the estate), and I knew you must dread the return of Sir Hector, and his discovery of the fact, sooner or later.
I was inside one of the suits of armour when you handed the ‘Blue Water’ over to the vizier or agent of the Maharajah. I heard everything, and when once you had said what you said and I had heard it—it was pointless for me to confess that I knew—but when I found that you had a duplicate made, I thought what a splendid thing it would be if only we had a burglary and the ‘blue Water’ substitute were stolen! The thieves would be nicely done in the eye, and your sale of the stone would never be discovered by Sir Hector.

Had I known how to get into the Priests’ Hole and open the safe, I would have burgled it for you.

Then Sir Hector’s letter came, announcing his return, and I knew that things were desperate and the matter urgent. So I spirited away that clever piece of glass or quartz or whatever it is, and I herewith return it (with apologies). I nearly put it back after all, the same night, but I’m glad I didn’t (Tell John this.)

Now I do beg and pray you to let Sir Hector go on thinking that I am a common thief and stole the ‘Blue Water’ –or all this bother that everybody has had will be all for nothing, and I shall have failed to shield you from trouble and annoyance.

If it is not impertinent, may I say that I think you were absolutely right to sell it, and that the value is a jolly sight better applied to the health and happiness of the tenants and villagers and to the productiveness of the arms, than locked up in a safe in a the form of a shinning stone that is of no earthly benefit to anyone.

It nearly made me regret what I had done, when those asses, Digby and John, had the cheek to bolt too. Honestly, it never occurred to me that they would do anything so silly. But I suppose it is selfish of me to want all the blame and all the fun and pleasure of doing a little job for you.

I do so hope that all has gone well and turned out as I planned. I bet Uncle Hector was sick!

Well, my dear Aunt, I can only pray that I have helped you a little.

With sincerest gratitude for all you have done for us,

Your loving and admiring nephew,

‘Beau’ Geste

“A beau geste, indeed,” said Aunt Patricia, and for the only time in my life, I saw her put a handkerchief to her eyes.

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