Grow the Roses!

~ From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success ~

I need to offer some explanation for that last post. It was more gloomy than even what’s normal for SBS. I was shocked myself when re-reading it. I don’t always know what’s going to come out when I write and, despite my best effort, I allowed the abysmal state of the world to bring me down. I use this blog as an outlet. The steam must pour forth – and I have, after all, committed myself to honesty. I’m sorry that I, and my few unfortunate readers, sometimes get burned by it.

…but to keep with the steam metaphor: if properly channeled, it can do good work.

The world is no different now than it has been. I’ve grown up with those herd-animals parading around the cities pulling down monuments. I understand their mindset. I know the pull of the herd-mind and the zeal for engaging in religious rituals. I understand there is no soul left to the fleshly carcass that was Europe; it’s writhing around now like a zombie, feeding on whatever it can find left of the Holy Spirit. These audacious displays are only newly manifested, not newly conceived or felt. They’ve been a long time coming and maybe it’s best to get the anti-christ into the open instead of him hiding.

The only question for Christian men, really, is what to do about it.

Even at my worst (as in the last post), I never stop believing in providence. I never stop praying. I simply can’t. It’s similar to the way I’ve described my post-military suicidal depression: no matter how low I get, there’s always this iron floor below which I cannot sink. I cannot give up my faith in God or in His providence. Believe me, I’ve tried. In the throes of my most cynical prayers, there lurks the cast-iron floor of hope that He’s listening and is working out some mysterious will for the good of those who believe in Him.

Without going into detail, I’ll simply reject “secession” as a viable option. Nor should we fight for dirt. That would be like trying to cure a cancer patient by getting him out of the hospital and back home to his easy chair. Even were we successful in creating a new state, it would be fraught with the same sickness and degeneracy, only with a few nominally “white” laws. I don’t want some Darwinian “Smartmanistan” anymore than I want liberal Satania. Hoping the Russians or the Muslims will save us is equally tepid an option. Physical technique can never conquer spirit.

What we need now, and desperately, are Knights of the Sacred Rose…

Champions of the heart who feel deeply and see life through a spiritual lens. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again now: we need poets. And good ones. Not to be confused with “evangelists” who are limp-wristed purveyors of the devil. We need artists who openly defy Satan, in the name of Christ! Who can remind any living Christian that the stone has been rolled away and Babylon will fall!

Satan and his cadre of demons and jews have, with billions of dollars at their disposal, created that “strong delusion” spoken of in Scripture. But Scripture also speaks of “those with ears to hear…”

We, we last few men of the West, ought to give them something to listen to…

Look Away, Look Away…

~ The harp is hung upon the wall, unstrung.
And the harpist’s pliant hand is dust,
While men read, as read they must,
What once was sung… ~

I’ve been tempted to accept doctrines of “free will” for cynical reasons. Mine is a life without meaning, power, and certainly without romantic love. All I’ve known is failure and everything I’ve loved is gone. The ground where old Europe once flourished has been razed and is in the process of being salted. And this, with Christ as our shepherd? How is He lord? How to trust, not to mention worship, a God like that? Better to say He’s not involved in any of it and all the mess is our own doing, unguided, with no plan.

But that view comes with a high cost. There is something comforting in the thought that even our failures have some final end in God’s plan. Without there being a plan, our failures are just failures and we’ve got to pull a Nietzschean move and simply accept ourselves as actors on the lip of a void.

You all might think less of me for this, but I can’t face it. I can’t deal with the world as it is. I can’t even read old fairy tales anymore because it hurts; a looming tragedy, clouding the happy narrative…

It tries my faith all together. There’s no philosophy stopping me from giving it up. It’s pure stubbornness at this point. I remain a Christian for the simple reason that I hate and am deeply disgusted by the anti-Christians. And deep down, I retain some small hope that man from Bethlehem, in all the beautiful things He taught, was telling the truth.

I will not turn away from Him.

…but can I keep from turning away from life, itself?

Maybe my choice to keep breathing, despite how the vast majority prefers I stop, and despite there being no reason for it, is, in the end, the best, cynic-free, argument for free will…?

 

~ Blue Danube ~

Staefel: Why do they call it the Blue Danube? Looks brown to me.

Mr. Chips: There’s a legend, you know? The Danube is only blue to the eyes of, uh…well, to people in love, you know? 

It’s the same for the manifest horror we’re living through.

If we remember Christ and our people, we’ll see the world in color; we’ll walk on troubled waters…

My Spiritual Journey

Hunter Wallace at Occidental Dissent has provided an update on his political journey. He does this from time to time, making it easier to reference ideological pivots. I read his latest and saw clear differences in our paths. His is the captain’s log of a materialist, without discernment of spirit; and, while the myriads obsess about viruses and politics, I’m off in a lonely window sill, daydreaming about fairy tales.

My worthlessness has been made apparent to me in all the sundry ways that dig into a man. Be it ubiquitous rejection or outright disdain, there’s no place in the world for white men who retain a vision of the cross. Unless that vision is seen through a rainbow-colored haze of jacobin rationalist wizardry, who really cares about it? Who really cares what a middle-aged, unremarkable, valueless white man has to say about the world?

Unlike Wallace’s, which starts with him as an atheist in high school, my story begins in the remote regions of the ancient near east. All was covered by the dark wing of Satan’s kingdom, far as the eye could see. But an infant-sized hole opened in the gloom, letting in rays of a red and purple-hued sunrise, and with it, a meteor crashed through the darkness, striking the sands of Bethlehem, torching the base clay. When the dust settled all beheld a glorious crystal castle, covering the length and breadth of Europe and shrouded in a Heavenly ray…

The gloom rolled back, revealing the sunrise, and all in Europe marveled and praised God. And the world, still covered in the gloom, praised as well, although they didn’t know who they praised, because they had never seen such a thing as that crystal castle.

It stood strong for many years. The morning turned to noon and noon, slowly, turned to evening. But as those evening shadows began to lengthen, so too did the surrounding gloom begin to waft back into Europe. There was an outcry in France. Revolution! Men forgot the beauty of the castle and began to feel confined by it instead of thankful for it. They became evil and began tearing the castle apart, brick by crystal brick.

But there were many who still remembered the beauty of the castle. They fought back! They fought for the glory of their home, their people, and their God. And yet, the light was fading. They could not last. The castle – that miracle from Heaven – was, at last, destroyed. It was shattered into a million pieces and its inhabitants scattered to the winds. The evil men, with inner-gloom seeping out of their mouths, set up their throne over the heart of the old castle, and reign there to this day, sending out their spies, warriors, and servants, to hunt down the men who fled.

While the story is dark and terrible at this point, there is some hope. The men who fled took with them shards of the old castle. Took them and passed them on to their children. And their children passed them on to their children. With each passing generation, tales of the glory of the old castle are told and each time a new child learns it, the shards glisten with their old power.

Over time, these shards were discovered by the evil men. One by one, the remaining pieces, and those in possession of them, are found and destroyed. Many are confiscated with systematic efficiency by machines called “government schools.” They’re ripped away from small children and crunched under the boots of monsters called “teachers”.

My story?

I was given one of the last pieces. Actually, it’s more like I found it in a box of my grandfather’s old things. Only through accident I discovered what it was. And now, evil men hunt for me, desperately looking for the last few pieces so they might forever erase the memory of that old castle.

I hold it now, as I write this account. I hold it as I think of my own worthlessness. Why did it have to come to me? It doesn’t shine much anymore; hasn’t lit up in years, but…wait…was that? Did it?

…did it just flicker?!

Shotgun vs. the Entire Female Race

I’ve been in discussions with two friends recently, in different contexts, about the same issue: wives!

As a hopelessly single romantic, I had no idea what to say to either. Matters are worse because the second is in the habit of bringing his family over to visit. That means, I end up holding a baby. It’s inevitable. Something that cute will be held and cuddled. And I inevitably end up wishing for my own smelly bundle of drool.

We were outside working, right in the middle of solving a pivotal mechanics issue, when my friend’s wife comes shuffling out of the house. She was holding the newborn and demanding all work stop until the unfortunate dad took him inside to change him.

“I’ve done my two times, now it’s your turn!”

We were in one of those jams where all hands were needed and a man’s temper is never more on the line than when he’s holding something heavy in place. He stormed into the house, his normal passive-aggressive reflex temporarily overloaded.

I tried to see it from her perspective. Violating an agreed diaper change schedule could potentially be seen as a violation of her dignity, and caring about petty honors in a domestic relationship is, I guess, vital to the mutual-respect clause in any marriage…and yet, couldn’t she have taken one for the team? Especially at that tense moment?

Seems to me like she did the opposite of supporting-her-man in that situation. A good woman makes a man’s life easy and pleasant. She’s a sheer delight, most of the time. She’s the rays emanating from the porch light after a hard day’s work…at least, when she’s at her best, right?

A few resolutions from this fiasco:

1 – I decided never to be passive-aggressive in my marriage, (assuming some Christian woman ever loses her mind and marries me). In fact, passive-aggression, upon reflection, seems like the coward’s way out. Better, always, in my humble, bachelor’s opinion, to be as forthright as possible. Get it out quick. God gave us tongues for a reason and I’d much rather enjoy my wife’s than fear it…if you know what I mean, fellas. ;)

2 – While having been single for (almost) forty years, I’ve stopped daydreaming about marriage. It’s unfortunate and I do feel my life is a lot worse for it. I’ve directed a lot of anger at the world, society, and God because of it, and some little to myself as well. And while I’ll never see being “single” as a gift, like the Christian peddlers-in-platitudes would have us believe, I do, at times, have to try and see the up side to it. I get to leave my married friends in their troubles, admitting that I’ll be looking to them as guides when my time comes.

…it’s like one of my friend’s said, marriage (children, etc.) can be a night-sky full of bright, giggling, drooling, stars, but there’s sometimes a lot of black in between…

3 – I think I’d renegotiate the marriage contract somehow. We’ll get a jewish lawyer to hem up the loopholes. My fictional wife and I will try our best to be “family” oriented, sacrificing ourselves when need be for the good of the special thing we’re building together. Not to overdo the metaphor, because of course love of Christ will be the “foundation”, but maybe the “floor” will be the aim of a lasting organization, filled with love, dedicated to making life beautiful for all involved and the world at large…an act of Christian art.

4 – …and here’s the controversial one: mired in cynicism about women, I used to say all English-speaking women were feminists. I know that’s not true now, but there’s something true in it. The world we live in is dedicated to Satan and his army of lawless men. Their goal is to “break” the natural way of things by forcefully imposing their utopian visions onto the pliable clay of human hearts. Accordingly, all women have been informally placed in a different “rank” than men.

“In what world does this guy think I’d ever submit to him?!”

…the act of female submission, rather than being a joyful way to serve her family and God, is now an act of humiliation. It says something about the quality of any woman who, at least formally, says she’s willing to do it. It’s like we’re asking them to walk downtown, to be seen by all their friends and co-workers, with their heads shaved and no makeup, or some such humiliating scenario. I think of the stereotypical dad who has to drop his mortified daughter off in front of school in a beat up, smoking, old car. “Drop me off a block down, please!”

I used to blame women for this, but the older I get, the more I blame Satan and his liberal army for it. It’s not a woman problem – it’s a man problem…

Luckily, I get to sit back and watch how my friends deal with it…

~ Everlasting Arms ~

It is difficult to have Christian faith in a world of “science”. I hate to be the pedantic voice for “today’s kids” with nothing but arrogant anecdote, but I think my experience warrants a mention. A terrible ubiquity…

Many Christian kids grew up without questioning their faith. And ours was a genuine faith, whatever the systems-men may say. I’ve searched the rotten pits of my heart on that; it comes up “genuine” every time. So, genuine, yes, but naive. Untested. Given to us freely by our parents, but given raw. We all know what the blacksmith has to do with raw metal…

I was especially infected with a naive fatalism: God was taking me into the daydream. I was going to be a Navy SEAL! A brave warrior, hailed with respect and honors by the mere mortals surrounding me. And I was going to marry the beautiful, Christian, cheerleader. We were going to sail into the sunset, doing intellectual battle with Muslims, Liberals, and atheists…

…but it didn’t work out that way. Was it providence or mere chance that said “NO!?” In hindsight, I know the correct answer is to see His hand in it, but here we get to that phase in a young Christian’s life when genuine faith is tested and, for the vast majority, found wanting. The last Pew poll I read had something upwards of 80% of Christian teens losing their faith in their freshman year.

See, that’s the year we graduate high school and discover, for the first time, the unreality of our fairy tale. We find the veil pulled back and behind it isn’t a land fairer than day, but a smog-filled landscape of barren, plantation, machine; churning, churning, never-ending, and we, the slaves, shackled to a life of debt, always looking to the next paycheck. The lucky slaves get a few hours opiates before back to work on Monday.

We are valueless on the plantation. Worth hardly the minimum wage. We can be spoken to without dignity, treated with revulsion, cast out into the cold. And when you’re in the cold, where is this man who is supposed to be our shepherd? What is a lord in Palestine to the homeless on a park bench?

Where is Jesus when love, that almighty force, fails, and our hearts are broken?!

But as I said, our faith was genuine. We cannot turn to the godless plantation with its opiates and false thrills. So we turn inward and find nothing there but petulance and selfishness…

And it’s there, in our inner-hearts, where we have our first genuine encounter with Him, walking across the deep waters of our hurt and shame, offering us His hand, if only we’d take it.

We have to find Him in our hearts. He’s there and will embrace us warmly; a friend waiting patiently next to our sick bed, seeing our fever break. And our parents, and their parents, and theirs, and the loving embrace of the old Europe that is, contrary to the monochrome fairytales of childhood, the real land that is fairer than day…

It is a terrible and narrow path. Few walk it. I’m not sure I have the courage to believe it. But if we take His hand and truly seek the Kingdom, we shall find it.

…He promised.

Fatheist’s Farewell…

I hope you all pardon me but I’m hen-pecking on a phone since, as part of my seemingly neverending humiliation of late, my computer died. It was already the backup to my main which died months ago. So a SBS first: blogging by phone…

I need to write and announce another break. I, like George MacDonald’s Thomas Wingfold, have thoroughly lost my faith.

…that is, what I’ve lost, in hindsight, was no faith worth keeping anyway. I hope it’s not too cynical to note my belief that most all modern religion going by the name “Christian” is nothing of the sort, with different sects failing in different ways. There may be genuine love for Jesus out there but I’m less sure even of that.

How often have we done, as Wingfold challenges his congregants to do, something for Jesus, simply because He told us to do it?! I confess, after thinking, whatever my public morality, it’s always been done in an effort not to upset or disappoint my parents. Either that or done for the sake of a good name.

I can only think of maybe one instance in my entire life when I’ve done something specifically for Him, in hopes He would enjoy it…I used to sit in my window seat for hours, playing music for Him. How much joy He got from it, who knows, but it was for and to, Him…

As an aside, I can see the soul-destroying force of Calvinist theology on this point. What use is a song to a God who will never be pleased by human action? Combine the impossibly of pleasing Him with a grace habitually taken for granted, and you have a recipe for a pointless religion. You can’t make Him happy, only angry, but no matter, since we’re forgiven! All our good deeds, then, are for man since God will never accept them.

…but George MacDonald didn’t believe that. Do I? I can say, at least, I don’t want to.

Thomas Wingfold had his faith challenged by a raving atheist and, as a result, delved into the Gospels to find whatever was in them he might actually believe. In his journey, he discovers the real Jesus and, in time, came to love Him, even before he was ready to believe any of it was true.

Unfortunately, I’ve always believed God exists, but creeping through my adult life has been the sinister worm of doubt as to how much Jesus’ words could be trusted. I’ve seen no miracles nor any moving mountains. All I know is defeat and humiliation…

I aim to do as Wingfold did, and immediately cease all Christian output unless I can speak it with my entire heart.

The most recent of my humiliations, I was fired from my job, apparently owing to the virus shutdowns and subsequent loss of business. And that, dear friends, is one of the least of things that have happened to me in the past month…

I can’t return to this blogging project until I can say, truly, He’s in control of all the dark providence…in control and also cares. It’s easy to say so friends but don’t you dare say it or brag about your faith unless you’re ready for Him to tease out the real from the mere presumption.

It all comes down to whether He is a modernist author with capricious characters running crazy throughout a nonsensical narrative, or whether He’s the writer of fairytales, who lovingly crafted each of us…

Until the true faith emerges,

–

Shotgun

 

~ Come Thou Long Expected Jesus ~

I’ve got a streak of sorriness running right through the middle of me and nothing I do can get rid of it. I’m afraid whomever I meet can see it within the first few seconds. I can say though, with honest lack of pride, I’ve been good enough to, at least, recognize when truly good men enter my life. That is, truly Christian men. And when they do, I’ve always latched on to them with happiness, even while not realizing it was the living God I was latching on to in them.

So I’ve rarely envied other men nor lusted for women, although I’ve often had wicked desires to those ends; the idea of me having what they had was overpowered by the shame of knowing I wasn’t worthy of it. So mine was (is?) more of a petulant anger at God for not giving me what, it seems, He’s freely given so many others, rather than naked lust.

And how can God deal with that failing in a man without liberal use of humiliation? Accordingly, my Christian struggle, especially of late, has been one humiliation after another, with my petulance rising along with it – a child’s tantrum at being denied childish delights.

In George MacDonald’s “Phantastes”, a traveling knight is caught up in the shame of his sin and is driven to atone for it by venturing out in rusty, tainted, armor. He vows to engage the evils in the world until his armor shines like new from the bangs and slices of battle.

I’m afraid I have to do the same. All my life I’ve run after what was meant for my betters. Only now have I grown enough to admit it – and even then, only when the Holy Spirit is on me (which is, I hope, more often than not…I still have my petulant fits).

“Why aren’t you married?!”

…because I’m not worthy of a Christian woman.

“Why don’t you have a house and impossible-to-pay mortgage?”

…because the plantation knows how worthless I am?

“Why don’t you go to church?”

…because I don’t obey our Lord enough to warrant being associated with His disciples…

And so on we go down the miserable spiral of dizzying self-pity. There’s only one man who can save me. He’s currently in the grave…

…but tomorrow is Easter Sunday…

Heimbach in Hindsight…

I’ll begin this sad post with a personal admission:

I am close to tears as I write this. I am humiliated for having referred to Matthew Heimbach as a “goth”. I’m not ashamed for saying it, but for having said it with only half my heart, while deep down, and in light of many personal hours of friendship with the man, knowing he wasn’t; knowing he and I were animated by very different spirits. Ashamed for overlooking my (usually accurate) reading of men and naively placing hope and friendship in someone who, in hindsight, lacked fundamental Christian character.

Have you ever made this blunder, readers? Have you ever given a man friendship, brought him into your circle of trust, only to find he was an imposter? A centipede in the heart of a ripe apple? I’ve publicly defended this man. I’ve put my reputation on the line for his sake. I’ve spoken highly of him to close friends and gotten into heated arguments with my parents for his sake. We were brothers! We were literally in trenches together! And now?

For those who don’t know, Matthew Heimbach has recently resurfaced in the media for having renounced his “white nationalism” and pledging allegiance (in more or less words) to the cause of left-wing “anti-racists.”

I try not to be overly hard on men. God knows I need forgiveness for personal failings more so than most. So I overlooked the drinking, the womanizing, the little breaches of propriety. Then came the fateful “night of the wrong wives” which turned into a circus in the national media. Heimbach was caught in a very public act of adultery and slunk off to the shadows to recover. At last, he’d offended in a way I couldn’t ignore. Nevertheless, I was still willing to be his friend, at least, at a distance…still willing to defend him publicly. He’s not the first man to have fallen to that temptation, however awful and hypocritical. I hoped that, over time, I could be a mitigating salve from a distance. I pictured us meeting up again in a few years, having drinks, being supportive…

…but, I suppose I did abandon him then and maybe, if he reads this humble post, he’d be right to feel like I’m disingenuous in talking about our friendship. Some friend, right? And yet, for a man to find forgiveness, he ought to at least be penitent…

I first met Heimbach in a hotel bathroom at a Council of Conservative Citizens conference. Gordon Baum was still alive and the pro-white movement was just beginning to emerge into the online world. He was wearing boots and jeans with some Dixie-Outfitters style t-shirt…this, at a conference where most were wearing suits. We were washing our hands together and I said something about having been to Towson recently and having seen someone writing racist messages all over the sidewalk in chalk. He laughed and we hit it off, palling around at the conference.

I remember him getting into a debate with an old man, must have been in his seventies, about how the Republican party was no longer watching out for white interests. The old man couldn’t understand the anger towards established conservatism. This was to be a continuing theme for Heimbach who grew more and more extreme in his rhetoric as the years passed, culminating in his “Death to America” college tour.

…and despite all appearances to the contrary, Heimbach’s recent “move” is no real shift. I’ve watched his recent “Light Upon Light” video confessional many times over the past few days and have heard nothing at all different from his typical rhetoric. Heimbach hasn’t changed, at all.

For those reading who may not believe me, know I went with Heimbach to Charleston SC, days after the infamous Dylan Roof church shooting. We placed wreaths on the church steps and Heimbach gave an on site media interview, lamenting Roof’s violence and wishing for a world without the dehumanizing socio-economic elements that generated it. He was excited the entire trip about his upcoming sit-down interview with a member of the black panthers, whose rally we attended that same day. That was the day I snuck behind the speakers and got one of their black panther flags. I was parading it around behind them all in mockery. (For anyone who doubts this story, there are pictures). I had intended to run off with it and burn the thing, but Heimbach stopped me. He was dedicated to his racial harmony ideas, even back then…although, I didn’t understand or appreciate them then, nor do I now. Despite their incessantly anti-white and violent language, not one of the black panthers nor any of the blacks in the crowd threatened us in anyway. It was only after they marched off that a group of ANTIFA white kids from the local university came trouncing up, shouting and calling us “racists.” Heimbach, even then, berated them, essentially, for not being true-believers in their racial ideals, berated them for not marching off with the black panthers and joining them in solidarity…

So Heimbach hasn’t changed, at all. He’s simply emphasizing parts of his ideology he hopes, presumably, will be more palatable to his fellow radical leftists. And to all the Alt. Right hangers-on reading this: he’s not alone. In fact, in typical Heimbach fashion, he’s actually out in front of every Dissident Right talking head, all of whom are moving in the exact same, “radical left” direction. Matt Parrott, for example, is on Twitter, openly claiming to be a “radical leftist” (his words), and Richard Spencer, in a recent YouTube livestream, openly calls for use of the word “racist” to describe us backwards whites with stereotypical prejudices.

They’ve always been the same. They’ve always been rationalist ideologues, trying to tinker with the modernist machine in little ways here and there.

…I, in the name of Christ, want the entire liberal machine torn down. Every bit of it. The entire liberal religion scourged from the Earth. This will happen, although now, I expect it will be done by angels with trumpets instead of any human action.

I’m deeply ashamed for having been a party to this, even while, deep down, knowing the entire “movement, with all its profanity and sexual perversion and posting of pornography, etc., was animated by the very spirit of liberalism I’ve dedicated my life to opposing.

Where are the men who fight for the culture of the antebellum South? Where are the men who will defend my grandfather’s vision? Where are the people who will sing “Shall We Gather at the River” at the funerals of their fallen loved ones?

…they’re not to be found among the spiritually severed “dissident rightists” who care nothing for any spirits and want only to build machines.

God forgive me.

My Stupid Faith ~ Addendum ~

I’ve often been told I’m stupid and I just don’t understand the big-brained systematics which are oh-so-simple that even the simplest of the flock easily grasp. That I’ve read far more systematic theology and far more graduate-level philosophy than any man’s soul safely ought, never comes into the picture – no, he who questions orthodoxy is damned to the dunce table for eternity. On the other side, I’m told by atheists, anti-Christians, and neo-pagans that I’m hopelessly stupid for rejecting their government-schooled materialism and “anti-realist” ethics.

Consider a popular Brit youtuber in the Dissident Right as a case in point. He’s so mired in “evolution” and “Darwinism” (he’s thoroughly possessed by both the Devil and B.F. Skinner), that he literally interprets all human events through the lens of biology, chemistry, and “behaviorist” cyclical norms…as if human action can be diagnosed and predicted like weather patterns.

I wrote a satire of the man and his compatriots; their ilk try to diagnose the Christmas phenomenon by measuring rising dopamine levels around December, and attribute it all to weather and the rotation of the Earth.

Systematicians interpret the Bible in the same way, analyzing King David, for example, through the lens of their neo-jacobin Calvinism, and predictably, they end up with a nonsensical picture. A friend, equally frustrated with disingenuous nuance on this point, suggested that, to him, King David’s actions in Scripture seemed totally nonsensical. How could this be the “man after God’s own heart?” He sinned flagrantly and was seldom disciplined. Furthermore, on his death bed, instead of reciting poetry or foreshadowing future universal redemption, he gives Solomon specifics on which legal loopholes to take advantage of to kill certain old enemies.

Of course this all seems nonsensical to those who look through a rational eye. It’s like trying to rationally describe a dance, or to analyze the stock-market crash by sorting the colors of shoe-laces on Wall Street.

Life, more broadly, is nonsensical without an underlying emotional connection to the living God.

I attended my grandfather’s funeral a number of years ago and was offended when the pastor, a distant acquaintance of the family at best, simply read off a crass summary of grandaddy’s life. To us, his adventures in Germany during WWII were the stuff of family legend and romance, but when read as a summary seemed almost offensive.

Maybe the scientific defense of Scripture is the same offense. “Some guy named Jesus was whipped, then forced to carry a heavy cross to the designated spot, where he was summarily executed…” …it’s silly, in that light.

But His trek to the cross, is our trek, and is both horrible, and exceedingly wonderful. We just have to see it.