Campbell looks at the Church and the world and wonders where it all went wrong
Something for the weekend. A selection of some of items on the internet which have piqued my interest this week.
Quite simply the best, and possibly most honest, political advert, of all time.
IF ONLY ALL POLITICIANS WERE THIS HONEST.
______________________________________________________________________________ Continue reading “WHAT A WEEK”
A previous post brought the following comment from Amanda:
‘Many people are not religious or spiritual; and if you would like your beliefs respected, you should respect others as well. Religious ideology does not belong in the law.
Those who have “unfavourable” views of homosexuality (ignorant bigots) are not tolerated because they are what’s wrong with society.
Can you give one non-religious reason that people should not have legal rights to pursue homosexuality?’
Some aspects of the comment should be noted.
The mention of ‘legal rights’ is a straw argument. No one is proposing criminalising homosexuality in the West.
Always the masters of the warfare of vocabulary leftists have, much to the chagrin of many, captured the designation of ‘progressive’. This is with the clear intention of suggesting that any who oppose them are thereby ‘regressive’.
One of the main problems with progressives is that in their utopian desire to create the perfect society they are impatient and don’t allow society to develop. Like little children viewing the sweets at the checkout they know what they want and they want it ‘Now!’ and will have a tantrum until they get their way.
It is this infantilism, when linked to the unswerving certainty that they are indisputably right, that leads to the horrors of ‘progressive’ tyranny. In order to build the new utopia everything in the past has to be thrown away, baby with bathwater. Progressives have a constant yearning to try to start afresh from Day One.
In rejecting Christianity our progressive elites have also rejected the Christian virtues which not only made society bearable but made it safe. Virtues have been replaced by values; unfortunately values are no societal defence when those values are infinitely malleable.
One of the unacknowledged results of this wish to start de novo is that the baby inevitably gets thrown out. In deposing Christianity as the main formative influence on Western culture and replacing it with an inchoate belief in emotion as the standard by which all events and statements are to be judged we have ‘progressed’ to a situation in which society has left itself wide open to harm, all in the cause of not wishing to give ‘offence’.
Scorned by progressives as an attitude of mind which leaves the individual wide open to oppression the Christian virtue of humility has all but disappeared from society.
This has more important ramifications than the incredible rudeness of contestants on reality television. The disappearance of humility is seen in individuals and bodies putting forward their ‘demands’ rather than requests. A request opens the way to discussion and give and take; a demand opens the way to confrontation and conflict. The disappearance of humility has opened the door to a different, more selfish and divided society with its concomitant dangers.
Consider Muslims who eagerly cry out against ‘religious discrimination’ when police target them for investigation. This has led to a situation where police in the UK have ignored monstrous Muslim rape gangs operating throughout England. The Muslim religion is front and centre in a worldwide plague of violence, yet rather than sacrifice a bit of time and precious dignity to help ensure the safety of the most vulnerable of their neighbours Muslims demand that everyone reinterpret reality in order to safeguard their tender feelings.
We find police assigned to protect high-crime neighbourhoods being castigated for racism when they question youths from an ethnic minority. Yet it is inevitable that more youths from ethnic minorities are questioned by the police than any other group. The highest crime areas are those with the highest proportion of ethnic minorities and most crime is committed by young men. Those who are viewed with suspicion in such areas are inevitably going to be mainly young men from ethnic minorities. Yet the police are denounced as racist for stopping and frisking the suspicious, when the truth is the officers are trying to protect the majority of non-criminals in those mainly ethnic minority areas.
We find illegal immigrants demanding their ‘rights’, whilst breaking and thus endangering the very laws that sustain those rights for all.
We find homosexuals activists who deliberately, viciously and wickedly attempt to destroy the businesses of those who, in conscience, cannot regard them as they demand. In the UK the latest instance is the attempt is to force Ashers Bakery in Northern Ireland to bake a cake carrying propaganda in support of homosexual marriage. Ashers have been ordered by the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland to apologise for giving offence to the homosexual rights activist who ordered the cake, and to give him hard cash to ameliorate the ‘offence’ caused.
All these are instances of selfishness, the point blank refusal to live graciously in a world of difference where some people have beliefs and customs which do not accord with ours. Instead we have the demand that everyone conforms to a particular set of minority beliefs. The progressive has a specialised concept of give and take; we do the giving, they do the taking.
The good of the majority and the good of the individual are often in conflict. Unquestioning following of the general will is a recipe for regimented tyranny. Unswerving insistence on the rights of the individual is a recipe for chaotic anarchy.
For the individual to be willing to make sacrifices for the good of the many he has to be able to value the other and be willing to make sacrifices for the good of the other. Humility sometimes demands the strength to place the well being or conscientious beliefs of others before one’s own. Paul advised us in I Corinthians 8:7 ‘Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling-block to the weak’.
Only the strong can be truly humble; perhaps this is why progressives make such strident demands for conformity.
When a society throws out Christianity it throws out more than bell-ringers and evensong, it throws out harmony between people.
What is it with homosexuals and bakeries, do they have a cake fetish? It is easy to get the impression that no sooner do they find a bakery run by a Christian than in they pop and request a ‘wedding’ cake for a homosexual couple, all the while longing for a refusal so that they can collapse in a miasma of hurt and rush to their lawyers and compliant media outlets. Perhaps we thought that this was just something those crazy Americans would do but, like reality TV, McDonalds and Kermit the Frog it has crossed the Atlantic, and to Belfast of all places.
It is no closely guarded secret in Belfast that Ashers Bakery is run by committed Christians. Nevertheless, LGBT activist Gareth Lee popped in to a branch of Ashers bakery and asked for a cake featuring a picture of characters from the children’s programme Sesame Street and decorated with the slogan ‘Support Gay Marriage’. At present homosexual marriage is not legal in Northern Ireland and there is a vigorous political campaign to bring the province down to the same level as the rest of the UK. After talking it over the staff decided that this would go against the company’s Christian ethos, turned down the order and refunded Mr Lee his money.
Rather than pop down the road to another bakery where he could purchase a cake with a political slogan asking for the promotion of something illegal Mr Lee, in high dudgeon had recourse to the Equalities Commission who thereupon informed Ashers Bakery that they had seven days to bake the cake or face court action. Ashers stuck to their guns and now face that action.
Daniel McArthur, general manager of Ashers, said: ‘I feel if we don’t take a stand on this here case, how can we stand up against it, further down the line?’ He added that it was not the first time his company had refused cake orders: ‘In the past, we’ve declined several orders which have contained pornographic images and offensive, foul language’.
Thus we have a situation where a company is being pursued by a governmental body for refusing to promote an action at present deemed illegal by the same government.
The homosexual lobby exhibits an intolerance which is staggering in its hypocrisy. The champions of diversity are quite unable to tolerate any diversity of opinion, all must agree. If, as a matter of conscience, you don’t support their cause you must then be forced by the state to take actions which support their cause. Unfortunately organs of the state are all too willing to enforce conformity.
Andrew Muir, Northern Ireland’s first openly homosexual mayor supported the LBGT activist saying: ‘Businesses should not be able to pick and choose who they serve’, adding that he would be supportive of legal action against the bakery.
This is not a civil rights issue. This is not a case of a homosexual being refused access to a service because of his sexuality. If Mr Lee had wanted half a dozen Bath buns he would have been served. If the same cake had been requested by a hetrosexual it would still have been refused. Ashers declined to bake the cake because it contained political propaganda for a cause with which they profoundly disagreed.
If a Jewish baker refused to serve a Muslim customer his half dozen Bath buns because the customer was a Muslim that would be discrimination on a number of grounds. If the same Jewish baker were to refuse to supply a cake decorated with a picture of a RPG and the slogan ‘Support Hamas’ would that be discrimination?
What would happen if a Christian were to go into a bakery run by homosexuals and request a cake decorated with ‘Homosexual activity is shameful – Romans 1:27’? Most reasonable people would support the bakers if they were to refuse to provide a cake containing a message with which they profoundly disagreed. It is to be doubted, however, that the rights jihadis who are ever ready to take up the cudgels in the cause of homosexual oriented cakes would support the Christian in the demand for a biblical cake. For too many toleration is a one way street.
A Grain of Sand 