What concord hath Christ with Belial? (American Revelation X, Seven.)

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?

And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?

And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ~2nd Corinthians 6:14-16

Last week, I saw this. High School Seniors in East Baton Rouge, LA were told they were going to a job fair, and were instead shipped to a church for an anti-LGBT "Church service." This was done without the knowledge or permission of parents. The boys and girls were separated. The boys were forced into competitive "macho" acts for money...and then the girls were preached at about praying often and forgiving their rapists.

While one group was in the church, the other was left outside in the hot sun. Inside, students were hiding in bathrooms to get away from this shit.

And students, a fair number of them not yet old enough to vote, were promised food only if they filled out voter registrations handed out by Republican operatives.

Just a thought, but how the hell is any of this stuff...Christian?

What compact hath Christ with Mammon? What compact hath powerlessness with the powerful?

Couple things:

#1 I don't give a shit what your cause is. If you have to lie about it, do things in secret, and make your pitch only to a literally-captive audience that you're also abusing...you are not righteous and your cause sucks.

#2 I care about right and wrong, and I don't care if I go to jail. So, if I lived there and one of these kids was my kid...I'm going to find out who's responsible, and they're going to get beat up.

Firing some motherfucker, lawsuits, etc. WON'T get the message across. It never, ever does. Remove the responsible person, they'll just try that shit somewhere else. 

Arrest them, lock them up, or whup they ass. If people will not know fear, shame, etc. and insist on deviant behavior and fanaticism, then they need to be punished one way or another until they learn how to conduct themselves.

And make them a public example. These are people who have no problem weaponizing guilt, fear and shame against others. Make them feel it their own damn selves. This shit is wrong, period.

Addendum: This is the exact same viewpoint I'd have had as a Christian, as a conservative, you name it.

Then yesterday, I saw this.

A Christian school in Jacksonville, Florida expelled an 8-year-old girl because her parents wouldn't let her take a bathtub selfie that was a "Homework assignment."

I mean...what the fuck???? Aren't these the same fucking people who routinely accuse others of being "groomers" and "pedophiles?"

This is an elementary school, not OnlyFans, and this is an eight-year-old girl, not some adult aspiring model or some shit. Bathtub selfies are generally thought of as softcore pornography. Again, what the fuck?

Even if other people were so, "It's Okay when we do it" isn't the winning defense you think it is, Christians.

So, basically, these fucking perverts want to force their religion on your kid, fuck them, and then teach them to forgive and pray for their abusers instead of seeking actual justice under real laws.

They want the flesh-pot rewards of power for themselves, nothing but empty piety and crying out to a god that does not answer for you.

Seems legit.

If this is what American Christianity has become, then somebody needs to clean house, with a shotgun.

'Cause I'll tell you what, again, if it was somebody trying to get a 'bathtub selfie' of my kid or of any other kid that I care about or know and I found out about it...by the time I find out who's responsible and who's permitted this, you're likely going to be able to look all the way through some motherfuckers because I'm a blow some holes in them big enough to put a window in.

Because turning them in and letting the cops handle it might mean they get a good lawyer or some patriarchal religious asshole of a prosecutor lets them get away with it. Some things will just not suffice.

And it wasn't so long ago, that such was just a basic normal small-c conservative opinion and understanding of the world. Some things are just not done in civilized, normal society and that's that. 

It's nothing to do with laws or moral codices and everything to do with empathy and humanity. Some things are just wrong. It has ever and always been so and should continue to be so. Either you believe in God and/or that the universe has moral laws and a sense of right and wrong independent of Him...or you don't.

And yes, I still have enough Christian and conservative in me to think some things demand death. I don't even feel that way about normal criminals and murderers and shit though. 

But if you do things to people, like sexually abuse them, that would make a person's life worse than death...you should die. 

It should be known. You should become a cautionary tale to deter others. I've known way too many people of any, all, or no genders who've had to deal with sexual abuse...including in a church setting...to feel otherwise. And some of them, their pain won out and they're no longer with us.

That's a tragedy, and the kind of acts that cause it should be regarded as universally wrong.

Instead, modern Christianity condemns the victims and calls their suicides a sin. What the hell good is being alive if life is worse than death? These fuckers want to take away even that level of individual choice...because they can't be cruel to you or have power over you if you pull the plug.

Instead, over time, Christianity and "Conservatism" both became overtaken with the idea that right and wrong is defined by what the Church says, what their interpretation of "God" says or what the leader wants...as if such a system isn't immediately primed for abuse of every kind, followed by official protection of assorted bad actors.

Instead of being treated as the faith- and soul-destroying sins that they are, religious abuse and sexual abuse seem to be regarded as prizes, as rewards for power...as is the accumulation of obscene wealth at the expense of others...by too damned many people.

Didn't the Catholic church end up with two black eyes over this in the last few decades?? Didn't the Southern Baptist Convention just get smacked around by public opinion for the same?

When no less of a Baptist icon than Russel Moore calls it quits, maybe it's time, Evangelicals, to ask just what the fuck are we doing here? When the church or the convention is more concerned about accumulating data on abusers to protect itself from legal action than about protecting lives or souls or even virtue, you have a damned problem.

The ethic of checking things against the Word, developing an individual sense of right and wrong, and the important thing being that a "Christian" idea or two sticks, long-term, has been replaced by this cult-like idea that you have to buy the whole package, all the time. And when all else fails, the powerful promote...and get elected...illiterate, self-promoting goons who don't know any better, or they just don't care.

Faith, Justice, and Love mean nothing to these assholes. Greed and Ideology is All. 

Even...perhaps especially...when the contents can change instantly, can turn on a dime, on the whim of some person in Power...and most especially of all when those changes are harmful to people, and gratifying to some person deemed "Special" by the mob. All that is not forbidden is permitted. 

Up to and including that someone can have a bathtub selfie of your Tween daughter, apparently.

Including people like Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz living lives that would shame a goddamned goat and conducting themselves like a troop of horny Bonobos while they demand that the rest of us live quiet lives of chastity and righteousness and dour work ethic for their own profits. 

And increasingly, that we get no rewards or social support in return, let alone care when we can no longer work.

They want to get everything. And the rest of us get nothing.

No. Fuck that. One of these things is not like the other one.

And if we don't stop this shit now, it will never stop.

What concord hath Christ with Belial??

Ross Douthat, New York Times contributor, basically saying that if the Center and the Left want to stem the tide of fascism, they have to be racist.

I saw that shit last night.

Just how, exactly, did that ethic of appeasement work out for 1930's Europe, or for post-Brexit Labour in the UK?

Generally speaking it means you lose your ass and the fascists get what they want anyway. And then when the time comes to fight back, you have to earn your way back on the team before you even can.

Rich white conservatives are becoming increasingly open about how they want their slaves back. But if they don't want no Black people or Brown people or immigrants, who does that even leave??

My fellow white people, I'd consider my next move real careful if I was you, I'm just saying. Real damn careful.

And the worst part is, a lot of These Fucking People are just fine with that...so long as they get to be a better class of slave than some of the other slaves.

The sickest thing of all though, is that if any of this were really about promoting Christianity or Conservatism, what people like Ross Douthat really need is a hell of a lot more people from countries like Jamaica or Nigeria, but of course it's not about any of that.

If Republicans dropped the racism, religious extremism and sexism they just might never lose an election again. They just don't want to. They'd rather destroy themselves.

But they want to see how much glory they can get, on an individual basis, first.

They'd rather the world end, literally, than that they have to deal with social change.

But such change is inevitable.

The Brits, for all their faults, got this. That's why people like Kwasi Kwarteng (who is as Black as the jungle night) Nadim Zahawi (a Kurdish immigrant and outspoken opponent of Donald Trump's Muslim Ban) and Suella Braverman (a Buddhist of Indian descent) are in the Cabinet...or why Liz Truss...the third woman in my lifetime to hold the office...is PM, for that matter.

Some of these people's political stances would fit in handily with American conservatism or even libertarianism.

But Republicans, they just don't want to accept even that much change without burning down the world first. The cruelty is the goddamn point.

They want power, unlimited power, not to actually do anything or make anything better, but simply to have it so they can practice unlimited cruelty and perversion, make the world worse, and make you pay for it.

Fuck all that.

Again, what concord hath Christ with Belial?

And what good is the church or the seat of power if these fucking people have made them the houses of devils??

These fucking people would rather be fascist than free.

They want to fuck your daughter, take your money, and kill your neighbors...and then you. That is, if they can't traumatize you so bad, first, that you do yourself. And then they want to be considered righteous for it, while they condemn you to hell.

This isn't some secret plan being whispered about in back rooms and think tanks by elites and shady NGO's. No, they're telling us this themselves, right to our faces.

Now the only question is, what are we going to do about it?

We cannot reason with people who do not think the rest of us have a right to exist.

Think on that.

But don't think too long, we have to stop this garbage before it gets out of control.

It's really just that simple.

What concord hath Christ with Belial?

Six

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The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty." ~Ronald Reagan