Prayers With Incense

This morning in my devotional time I read from the eighth chapter of the book of Revelation. I was quite taken by the first part of that passage, when just after the seventh seal is opened there is a period of complete silence in heaven, and then an angel takes a censor full of incense and the prayers of the saints and releases them before God.

Wow.

I've been taking to saying quiet prayers any time I hear a siren wail. Somebody really needs God in that moment. I've considered never telling anyone I do that because I just want it to be about God ministering to them, that's all. It's about them and their healing and salvation.

The only reason I do bring it up is because today, while I was puttering around the house as I usually do on a lazy Saturday, I heard that siren, said a brief prayer, but it kept getting louder with other sirens joining in. One of them became particular mournful, exceedingly so, like the sickest banshee you could ever hear.

Makes sense.

This is the last day of a week in which this nation was shoved closer to that critical mass of the most putrid immorality imaginable. Thursday the Supreme Court further entrenched the codependent pillaging on behalf of the reckless by affirming nationalized health care. Friday they did themselves one better by more rigorously institutionalizing sodomy and establishing those who commit it a firmly protected class.

Oh Dave stop being so melodramatic. Get with the 21st century.

You know, there are right now a lot of church-respecting Christian-minded people bemoaning this turn of events also. But I ask another more pressing question that very few are asking.

How many of them are Catholicist?

This means how many of them are screeching about it because they like having it around so they can do more Tikkun Olam stuff to work it - work it - work it to repair the world? Some of the best arguments against this crap come from Catholics. Bravo! Really, I mean that. They should be commended for their bold stance in all this. They are truly some of the most vocal in their objection about what is happening. Kudos to them

But it all means nothing unless those who are on board with all of this repent and come to Christ. Yes, both Catholicists and humanists. Neither of them can bring an individual to Christ, especially an individual who is traumatically wounded and dives right into either homosexual behavior or the ferocious endorsement of it all.

I love getting my Los Angeles Times. I enjoy opening it up and reading precisely what the World wants me to think. As I've shared before, there is so very much irony all over the System's journalistic efforts, and today's feature was one of the best. May I share it with you? I'll go through the whole thing, if you'll allow me.

Page A1. Everything on there was about the same-sex marriage thing, except for the story beneath the fold. It was about dozens who died in terrorists attacks. But ya know? It could've applied just as much to the same-sex marriage people.

They're dying also.

The reason sodomy continues its advance at train-wreck speed (yes, I know it should be "break-neck" but I like my term better) is because not enough people make the only argument that could be made that is effective -- the truly truthful one. That argument is that sodomy kills. Do you know the facts about what happen to men and women in "sexually" (if you can even call it that) active homosexual relationships? Emotionally? Spiritually? Physically -- about the horrific things done to genitalia and the commensurate deleterious medical effects? This is why homosexual activity should be considered a sexual crime.

But it isn't because the narrative has been too entrenched. Talking about those destructive things would be mean-spirited, intolerant, thinking like a Neanderthal. I'm backwards, bigoted, and homophobic for bringing it up. Indeed that's where this is all going -- will I even be prosecuted for saying these things when I only do it because I do care about their well-being.

As a follower of Christ I love them and pray for them.

And you know what else? They too know what they're doing and how harmful and hurtful it all is. Too many won't admit it because they'd risk looking unsure about this wonderful crusade that has given them meaning and happiness. But then you also see what it is really about! It isn't about their natural tendency to want to be sexually intimate with another individual of the same sex! It is about them being deeply emotionally wounded and rejected, feeling they can't have physical love the way God made it to be, and then getting warm happiness fuzzies when homosexualist people smile and tell them they can be somebody if they'd just, as the words in the song from Frozen screech, "Let it go!"

So, yeah, back to page one of the Times. There's the first photograph of a same-sex couple engaged in some sexual-oriented intimate activity. There'll of course be many more. I understand that, helps the narrative, they're such good wholesome-looking people...

Page A3. All over this page is stuff about the Middle East and its never-ending revolutionary fervor. People tend to equate it with "Muslim extremism", but do you know what that extremism is? Much of it is about their revulsion to the slip-sliding moral decline here. Thing is, the Catholicist says, "Let's get 'em! Let's stop 'em! Send in more military! More security here and there!" Yes, Cain does do that stuff! Good for him! But nothing will change in your life unless you turn to Christ and His Kingdom and address the needs of others from there.

Muslims need Christ as much as anyone else. Do you love them? Minister to them? Do whatever it is you do in your life with their salvation in mind as much as you'd have anyone's salvation in mind?

Or do you just want to kick their ass like all other Catholicist-minded people do?

The worst of those attacks, by the way, was in Tunisia. A few months ago I went to a lecture by a Harvard professor who was renowned expert in the Middle East. Oh did he regale us with his vast expertise about the geopolitical machinations of all that's happening there, it was indeed vast. But as he droned on I realized he never got to the meat of anything regarding the real whys and wherefores.

What's funny is that he repeatedly made mention of one country that had become a bastion of democracy and free enterprise and enlightenment and all the rest of it. That country? Tunisia.

Ah the folly of authoritatively proclaimed eggheads.

Page A4. Here is more on those terrorist attacks with pictures. Death, destruction all around. I think, what if there were actual pictures of the death and destruction in the lives of homosexually-minded people and homosexualists dancing and cheering yesterday? I know it'd be harrowing to look at.

Page A6. Obama speaks at the services for the minister killed in that shooting last week. He says "We don't need more talk about race." Then why is he right then talking about it? All the massive media attention to that tragedy amplifies the narrative that all those in the south are racist... and of course homophobic. There was even a small story back on page 1 about the mixed feelings about the same-sex marriage decision from those in the South.

Oh those racist homophobic backwoods bucktoothed southerners...


At the bottom of page A6, by the way, was this photograph. I simply could not neglect to include it here. It was related to the story about the killing of one of two escaped convicts in New York. That was a news story with some legs, still has them. But this photograph. Cain's enforcers surrounding a church. Quite telling if you ask me.

Page A8. (I'm skipping some pages because of advertisements or redundant material.) Here is a continuation of a story from the front page about dissent. With it is a graph showing the "Evolution of same-sex marriage." Indeed in court arguments a few months ago when the case was heard, lawyers arguing in favor of the practice said our views about it have evolved. I wonder when our views about bestiality will evolve, or pederasty, or polygamy, or necrophilia, or rape, or incest, or any other abhorrent sexual behavior? Already people are arranging for themselves all kinds of "marriages", to the extent that the real end-game is that there will simply be no more marriage.

Really, why have it at all? What's the point? If someone who doesn't believe in God and believes I'm just a religious nut tells me I must endorse his views about same-sex marriage, I'm simply going to ask him why that's so important to him? If there is no God, what difference does it make what I think about what he does? Why should it matter? Why should he care? Why have anything "marriage"? Why have any civil discourse -- why even talk about anything? What if I just shoot you and marry your dead body? Then fricassee your liver and enjoy it with some fava beans and a nice chianti? Why not? Who says I can't? I mean, seriously: Who then even cares in the tiniest way what bunch of old people in black robes say?

Yes, the pathetic absurdity of the humanist, relativist, atheist crusader just gets more and more comical -- if it weren't so tragic.

Page A9. The story here is the showcasing of all the big Hollywood people who've brashly cheered on this Supreme Court decision. Just about every paragraph features some big shot movie star or musical artist soaking up their victory, tweeting their asses off about it. There are so many, and a testament to the power of movies and music and media arts to convince so many to be homosexualists. Insane.

Page A10. The front page story continues, with two more photographs of same-sex couples... you know.

Page A11. It's about the Republican hopefuls and how it's just not the thing to say anymore: "Um, ahem, err, um, this thing, you know, about how I'd really kind-of not prefer there to be same-sex marriage kinds of things don't hurt me okay." There's a photograph there showing dour, depressed folk holding up their signs, their silly signs, "Every child deserves a mom & dad." How misled they are, how unprogressive they are, how, how backwards -- and Puritan -- and Victorian -- and judgmental -- and and and...

Page A12. This is the continuation of the story about the South. A photograph shows another same-sex couple, this one with two 80+ year-old men finally getting married to one another -- in Texas! Take that you backwoods gun-toting cowboy-boot-tracking Neanderthal-minded Texas! Ee-yaw!

Page A15. Here's a story about HIV, and that over 100,000 who have it don't know it. The irony! If there is ever an argument against homosexual behavior that the mainstream media would actually promote, this should be it! Yes, I know you can get HIV from other sources, but male homosexual activity is one of the primary ways it gets spread the most. Yes, I know there is the consideration that HIV is a man-made biological agent designed for the purpose using it in some kind of nefariously secret warfare, yes I know all that.

Just the irony, that's all.

Page A17. (Yeah, it's still going.) Here is a story about some discovery about a genetic link between humans and Neanderthals. Seriously. I'm not making this up. Now, please, I'm all for science even if it is about genetics and anthropology and paleontology and all that. I'm not even making the argument for or against Darwinism or evolution or any of that here.

What I am saying is that the story does augment the narrative that God does not really exist, that science really is the only thing we can trust about things, and all the rest of it.

But damn. The irony.

On the one hand those of us who believe in God and some modicum of sustaining some measure of morality in society are called, yes, Neanderthals. (And please, even if not that exact word, homosexualists still think of us as something like that.) And yet, and yet, who are the ones directly descended from Neanderthals in this particular story with this particular perspective?

Page A19. The opinion page prominently features the discourse about something else the media have been pounding into the national psyche: the Confederate flag issue. Of course, the flag is supposed to represent racism in the South, which apparently still happens because a troubled young white man shot a bunch of black people in a church, which also then must represent homophobia because a lot of people in the South also expressly don't like LGBT things, which means if you're racist you must be homophobic especially if you're from the South, which means you're subject to an especially large does or revulsion, and know what? The Supreme Court now says we can revile you much more fiercely -- yaaay!

Page B1 of the next section of the newspaper. (Yes, the sordid details continue...) This is the "California" section, and sure enough, the lead story is how the Supreme Court decision affects Californians. Annnd there's yet another photograph of same-sex couples doing their you-know. This one features one of them weeping, holding a rainbow flag, his "partner" (I assume) with a heart-rendering "There, there"...

I actually wonder. Could his emotional expression be more along the lines of, "Oh my, what have we got now. If government allows us to do this, what else will it allow? And then how much will government use its ruthless enforcement powers to hammer us for things we now think we could do?"

How many of these people actually have the spiritual intelligence to grasp that?

Page B2. Story at the top is about a new kind of safe heroin-based painkiller. Yep, no matter how much these people think they've got the victory, they'll still need painkillers. Too ironic. Maybe they will find freedom and wholeness in Christ instead, but hey! Here's some stuff about painkillers! Just in case!

Page B5. More of the story, and two more photographs.

At the bottom of the page is Steve Lopez' column titled, "Scalia discovers we are the 10th circle of hell." Ha ha, very funny Mr. Lopez, your attempt at sarcasm there, funny. Ahem.

Except that, your feeble effort to detract from the magnitude of what's happened cannot reduce the impact of what happens when more and more people from anywhere not just California are having much more grease slathered on the slide right into the very real Hell.

Yes, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia makes a very principled case, but as a Catholic he can only know the law. That's a good thing, the law, it should direct people to the benighted nature of their own spiritual self-destruction, that's ultimately what it is for. As a Radical Selfist yourself, Mr. Lopez, you too only know the law, which in a very twisted way I confess, is actually the one redeeming value of this same-sex marriage thing.

The law will now come down hard on those who wish to be sexually immoral.

This is one of the most tragic ironies of all. Bazillions of people cheering this -- this: that the law will now be much more powerful to govern their reprobate behavior.

I can't tell which is stupider. That people want to do sodomous things to each other or that they want the law to direct all that stuff?

Thing is, because they've never been introduced to Christ -- to the real one, not that dead guy hanging limp at the front of church or that ethereal entity somehow abracadabra'ed into the piece of bread or that loud brash judgmental priest they want to run away from at a million MPH -- because they never been introduced to Christ they've spent their whole lives being beholden to the law.

How about if they had Truth and Grace -- and healing and salvation and freedom?

For you see, there is one more page that is relevant to all of this:

Page B7. Here is where the obituaries are. And the one prominent obit is about a man -- William Pajaud was his name, never heard of him -- who spent his life collecting beautiful artwork until the company that underwrote his entire collection went belly-up and he lost it. Lost it all, had to be sold at auction.

See, value extraction like this is just plain human sacrifice. People abuse the financial system for their own larcenous feedings. Damn there's a lot of extracting shit going on out there. (Just look at Greece, right now -- it is now in the darkest throes of its full-scale financial implosion because of this.)

Homosexually-minded people being told to go ahead and continue to wreck their lives is also just as much human sacrifice.

Don't do that anymore.

Ask the One who did the sacrifice that is all that's needed.

And yeah.

I know that I can still pray and pray and pray some more for them.

That they'd be introduced to Him.

I do it all the time.
___

BTW, I did finish my latest home page piece, and this blog post was intended to introduce that. Sorry. Just got caught up in things there. But the home page piece gets into some of the more fundamental aspects of all this, even providing a reasonable justification for Cain's dominion. Hmm! I invite you to look over it. As always, let me know what you think.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Wonderful Matter of Authentic Understanding

The Rationale of an Excommunication

Suffering the Stupid Person