Idolocracy

[GENERAL EYES]

I used to listen to Father Barron decades ago, before he became a Bishop and lost touch with the average person by meandering into overtly complex and sometimes tedious interpretations of Scripture.

Some of what he says makes sense to me personally, but I can also see, how at this point in time, it's not coming across the right way or for the right reasons in light of current events and the push towards Fundamentalist Nationalism.

I may consider myself Christian, even Catholic, to an extent, and I do agree there is a great spiritual yearing and darkness in the world right now, but I'm also awar enot everyone shares my perspectives on matters (and I don't expect them to) but the Project 2025 and associated rhetoric and lawmaking make me violently ill.

I agree Love Thy Neighbor is the best course of action, but there's also a little matter of the topic of DISCERNMENT that a lot of folks from all over the planet are missing out on.

Mainly, people who borderlineworship megalomaniacs and "leaders" whose moral compass is as far from Grace as one could possibly be.

I do thing our technocratic, hyper consumerised and blind faith in worldly matters have (pardon the pun) "trumped" what it truely means to have a personal relationship with the Divine aspect of not only our selves, but with others in a harmonious and communal fashion, and Society, at large is full of indiviuals grabbing and and grasping for something, ANYTHING, that fills the void....be it Politics, Gender or Sexual Orientations, Labubu Dolls, Stocks, Bitcoin, or any other materialistic trappings of this fallen world.

We were made to make this world a paradise, instead we're fighting over who gets how much and paving over and killing (or advocating the "elimination" of anything that doesn't fit neatly and nicely in our pursuit of self discovery and peace.

It's sad, and because of such a abysmal worship of self (regardless the manner) and oversight into what we can do to help better things for everyone (some are too self absorbed to see beyond their own worldview) I have elected, for the most part, to stay away from the madness and focus on my own well being after a lifetime of serving others as it began to shatter my faith in humanity to it's core.

So yeah, I've more or less Turned On, Tuned In and Dropped out of Modern Concerns for the most part.

Sometimes the best thing one can do in Dark Times is just nurture their own inner light and refuse to fight other peoples battles.

....and that's all I gotta say about that.

[Solvedit]

Plus, it seems a pretty fucking ineffectual god if the morals arent natural anyway, right?

In a world of God's infinite coding we should be born with the moral compass written into our DNA. Especially if our very survival yields any organizing principle to biological life.  It should exist through genetic memory and drive us regardless. A proto honor code that supersedes the artificial and comes from within and is designed by the very entropy of existence. 

God doesnt need to be spelled out in rigid doctrine to work through the daily interaction of living hearts. Right and wrong (benifit/detriment) is a more innate discerment than it gets credit for. And historically, doctrine can actually muddle that. 

A small issue with your notion of a moral compass written into our DNA is pointed out by the bishop:

Barron argued that one of America’s most foundational ideas — that all men are created equal — is a novel concept made possible only by Christianity.
"We're not equal in any way. Look at the classical political philosophers; they would never affirm the equality of all people. We're not equal in intelligence or moral virtue or beauty or courage or anything. We're radically unequal.

People can access a moral compass if they exert themselves through prayer, study, and reason.  

Many just won't.  Or perhaps can't?  There are sociopaths and people who don't know or care what healthy religion can be good for.  

The guidance and protection of God's grace is necessary or other people will eat your lunch, perhaps even while telling themselves it's your fault for not doing your praying.  Others simply want what they consider themselves to be entitled to.  Once you have decided what is right, will you have the freedom to do it? 

To the point of the OP, they are not talking about Idolocracy but theocracy [emphasis added:]

In an interview with Fox News Digital, Barron, perhaps America’s most well-known and beloved Catholic bishop, revealed that his address at the event will emphasize his belief that "if you marginalize and privatize religion, democracy is in danger."
"God is essential to the very foundations of American democracy," he asserted. "There's a lot of talk today about the threats to democracy, that is a true threat to democracy, the marginalization of God."
Barron explained that many of the societal ills seen today are due to this cultural separation from God.
"Take God out of the equation, what are you left with? Radical self-choice. Welcome to wokeism. Welcome to the culture of self-invention. ‘I make myself up, values is up to me, my gender, it's up to the whole structure of my life, it's my choice,’" he said. "That’s deadly to our democracy."

I disagree with what is being threatened.  Democracy is not being threatened so much as the concept of a republic and inalienable rights.  

Learning to tolerate a few misfits is a small price to pay for freedom, provided people show courage and don't let them walk all over everyone else's rights for fear of being cancelled.  

If you don't have a private means of salvation such as reading scripture, then you may find yourself stuck doing what the leading trend of the church in your area dictates.  The good Bishop may deny that many menbers and even some supreme pontiffs of his church are and have been in fact Marxist.  

If there is a God, can it be He really did speak to those Israelites and Apostles?  

The bishop's discussion and this discussion is all about theories and "shoulds" but it is my suspicion that some congregations may cynically seek out cowards or controllable people to be their "leaders" because they, the congregation will be able to dictate to them what they would like to have. 

His Holiness bishop Barron may be in denial that some of these things are going on.  One hopes he is not cynically putting on a false face calculated to appeal to Trump supporters.  Trump in my opinion is simply very good at determining what his projected constituents want.

[Solvedit]

The Bible cant even keep the god of each testament in line. There's not even a consensus on the morality of indiscriminate slaughter between the two.  Almost like Old Testament God was a land claim, and new testament God was leading by example against Rome. All things point to doctrine as a selective moral devices being deployed geopolitically in different ways at different times. 

For god so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son to... completely destroy everything that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.

What god did Jesus talk to and what god did Saul talk to? And are you SURE its the same god with the same motives? What did the babies and donkeys do?  Was Samuel off his bipolar meds again? 

An unqualified person's opinion:

In the OT, God helped an often-enslaved people free themselves and set up a nation.

In the NT, the Lord reaches out to those whose souls were enslaved, who were not likely to get much help from Judaism even though He did attest to Judaism's saving power in several places.  

Some scholars believe Ezra actually helped write or finish the Books of Samuel.  They were almost certainly not written in the days of Samuel. 

In Ezra, the Persians have captured Babylon from the Assyrians, who had captured it from the Babylonians, who had captured Judea and taken most of the people to Babylon.  According to the book, the Persian kings are so impressed with the Israelites' God that they order the temple to be rebuilt at Persian expense, and free the Israelite captives to go home.  

Can it be that the Persians desired to take Joseph-like helpers from the Israelites and made efforts to corrupt their religious leadership?  Can it be there was pressure from Persia to imbed their agents and some portion of the Israelite people let themselves be corrupted?  "Pharisee" sounds a bit like "Parsee" or Persian, although the term only came into use after the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucids.  Shortly after events described in the book of Ezra, God stopped sending prophets to the Israelites until St. John the Baptist.

[Knows]

Good reminder. Might happen soon I hope.

[putnam6]

[Image: https://denyignorance.com/uploader/image...ed73df.jpg]
Good reminder. Might happen soon I hope.

Yep, and the Democratic left will lose what's left of their paranoid delusional minds...

And as always, the newer generations will blame the boomers and GenX, ignoring thier personal faults and flaws, that all past generations had and overcame.

 was the title of the thread, "Idiocracy" case in point

 

 

NewsForce

@Newsforce
·
3m

IS GEN Z OFFICIALLY DUMBER THAN EVERY GENERATION BEFORE THEM?

Neuroscientist Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath testified to Congress

that Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized academic tests
than the previous one

—underperforming on attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, executive function, and general IQ.

Dr. Horvath blamed constant screen time and EdTech in schools, saying kids now spend more than half their waking hours staring at screens instead of learning from humans and deep study. “They’re proud of it."

[Karl12]

* It's in rant for a reason...  TLDR warning. 

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/exclusi...ayer-event

I don't know if this is "good news" or not.

I realize this is pretty standard in religious populism from presidents, we can remember Reverend Jeremiah Wright of Obama lore and his firebrand moxy...

But, STFU now... please, for the LOVE of the god you speak for in the vanity of MAGA politics.

I dont need a 7 times interpreted ancient text to tell me a thing... especially THAT politics-drenched anti-woke interpretation of it. God is not valueable through objective forced interpretation of it. Never has been.

So If we are doing the bible, I prefer Romans 12:2

But has it EVER been a God's will being interpreted? 

Seems like an evolving projected imagination of what a creator god would think, rather than anything built on phenomenonal experience with burning shrubbery. 

So apologies the Anglicans and half the Methodists went to pride parades and set up "love is love" outreach booths, but thats how they are interpreting the idea of "God's love" now...

Looking to Israel, our closest ally on the planet, our woke Christians (the kind opposing Trump policy and supporting rainbow identities) mirror the Jewish reform movement (the kind opposing Bibi policy and supporting rainbow identities) IN SO MANY WAYS they are really just a trinity short of being official kindred. And that same essence of progressive humility follows most advanced societies like secular is equal to advancement. 

Plus, it seems a pretty fucking ineffectual god if the morals arent natural anyway, right?

In a world of God's infinite coding we should be born with the moral compass written into our DNA. Especially if our very survival yields any organizing principle to biological life.  It should exist through genetic memory and drive us regardless. A proto honor code that supersedes the artificial and comes from within and is designed by the very entropy of existence. 

God doesnt need to be spelled out in rigid doctrine to work through the daily interaction of living hearts. Right and wrong (benifit/detriment) is a more innate discerment than it gets credit for. And historically, doctrine can actually muddle that. 

This isn't the erosion of god this bishop speaks of, but the erosion of a particular interpretation of HIS god, that is more built around maintaining a religiously indoctrinated comfort zone and politicking over God's current wanted values.

Woke was once part of the cultural erosion of the crusading god, the inquisition god, and the holyrolling truth god, and this is its obligatory resurgence.

And now the god being propped up is not so much love driven. In resurgent form it is back to saying, "If you dont do god OUR way, you're a heretical threat to our society and going to hell for it." 

in so many words this bishop has just said (without saying) that, "ALL NON FUNDIMENTALIST FORMS OF GOD ARE NOW ANTI-AMERICAN."

So I guess its time to REALLY lengthen this rant.

This can all EASILY be interpreted as CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM! (And theocratic)

Key ways this is observed include:

There are yet again parallels to draw with forms that dont exactly scream "democracy" anymore. 

And like everything else, there is a simple justification for it all; "Because woke was treated like a new moral doctrine asserting itself in politics, MAGA God can counter by "Making America Pray (Fundimentalist) Again."

Yeah, okay... but who are we all praying to? Reactionary theology? Fear of a woke planet? 

* The preceding has been approved by the US Constitution.

** My preemptive strike post deleted for thread drift of my own rant. Can be restored if needed.

You truly don't get that you are the gullible idiot?

[IdeomotorPrisoner]

You truly don't get that you are the gullible idiot?

Nope. I think others are gullible and were hypnotized and then sleptwalked into a quasi christian nationalist dictatorship under the illusion of patriotism and getting rid of wokeness and EVs...   And now they build imperialist-looking victory angel statues instead.

 So, there is a completely different view on who is hopelessly gaslit and gullible.