Our Mission In The Current Crisis

     “The truth will set you free”, says the Lord (John 8:32).   As religious practice and belief decline, moral decay and with it simple human misery are on the rise.  As fewer people know the truth, therefore, fewer are free.  We need a "two track" approach in the current crisis: we must, as always, proclaim the Gospel and "be prepared to give reasons for the faith that is in" us (see 1 Peter 3:15).  But we also need to address some of the smaller, but still vitally important, truths that are falling by the wayside. The Father of Lies has a large and growing army, even if most of his foot soldiers don’t realize whose standard they are following (see here), and not only does he feel strong enough today to spread his falsehoods far and wide, he is confidently assaulting the very idea of Truth itself (and not without some success).   His most dedicated cadres (devoted abortion promoters, hardened leftists, jihadists, moral relativists) do not seem terribly interested in dispassionate, reasoned argument, and can only be convinced by a real Conversion, which only God can provide.  
     There are a large number of people in the middle, however, perhaps a majority, whose hearts and minds can still be swayed by the right information and the proper example.  And unless more people come to embrace God's plan for living, the misery in our society will only get worse. I see this as a major purpose of this blog and others like it: to share whatever facts or arguments we come across that might reveal the Truth to the multitudes who hear mostly the lies of the Deceiver poured out by the news and entertainment industry, the universities and school systems, and many (most?) politicians.  That’s what I try to do with my “Abortion Myths” posts, and many others.  Freedom from sin, after all, is the ultimate freedom.

     That is, course, why those who push an anti-God agenda on Earth so often feel the need to quash the voices of those who disagree with them (here), because people set free by The Truth (see John 14:6) aren’t interested in what the social engineers are selling. You can read about the most recent in a very long string of examples here.  A 16 year old girl and her older sister were conducting a pro-life protest at the University of California at Santa Barbara.  As they were engaging a group of students in discussion a professor approached who tried to intimidate the protestors and the students with her credentials, and when that didn’t work she tried to drown out the protestors by talking over them and leading the students in a chant; when that also didn’t work she seized the teen’s sign and made off with it.  When the grown-up professor pushed the girl several times in her efforts to retain the purloined sign, the young pro-lifer had the presence of mind to capture the events on her cell phone while her sister called the police..  If you think the professor was ashamed at being exposed as a speech-censoring, teen-bullying, intolerant bigot, think again:  according to the story linked above, “In the report filed by campus police, she claimed she had a ‘moral right’ to act in the manner she did.”

     The professor above is not an anomaly: she is the very embodiment of the “tolerant”, “openminded” left (while Christianity belongs to neither left nor right, the most virulent attacks on Christian belief today are coming from the left). 

Tolerance on display at Wisconsin State Capitol

In the last few years you might have seen similarly abusive behavior on the part of countless advocates of various “progressive” causes . . . or maybe not, if you get your information from the mainstream media: they tend to find stories of this kind not newsworthy.  The information is readily available from other sources, however; Michelle Malkin has written a whole book about it [here], and incidents have continued to multiply.  Since then we’ve seen gay marriage supporters trying to ruin careers and shut down businesses [here], leftist public sector unionists invading the Wisconsin state capitol [here], liberal Common Cause protesters calling for the lynching of African American  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas [here], and on and on.

     In spite of, or rather because of, the established media’s refusal to cover the misdeeds of their ideological soulmates, the bulk of the population remains unaware of the true attitudes and behavior of the activists on the cultural and political left.  Like the professor above, they believe that they have a “moral right” to engage in behavior most Americans would consider intolerant, abusive, and even tyrannical.  But you don’t have to take my word for it: you can read it in their own words.  Michael Farris, President of the Home School Legal Defense Association has documented a number of apparently respectable law school professors expressing their views on tolerance, free expression, the role of the state (full article here).  Here’s a sample, from Catherine Ross of George Washington Law School:

In order for the norm of tolerance to survive across generations, society need not and should not tolerate the inculcation of absolutist views that undermine toleration of difference. Respect for difference should not be confused with approval for approaches that would splinter us into countless warring groups. Hence an argument that tolerance for diverse views and values is a foundational principle does not conflict with the notion that the state can and should limit the ability of intolerant homeschoolers to inculcate hostility to difference in their children.

This, by the way, was not loose talk around the faculty lounge: she published it in an article in the William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal (ironic name, don’t you think?).  And it’s not merely homeschoolers she’s gunning for:

If a parent subscribes to an absolutist belief system premised on the notion that it was handed down by a creator, that it (like the Ten Commandments) is etched in stone and that all other systems are wrong, the essential lessons of a civic education (i.e., tolerance and mutual respect) often seem deeply challenging and suspect. If the core principle in a parent’s belief system is that there is only one immutable truth that cannot be questioned, many educational topics will be off limits. Such “private truths” have no place in the public arena, including the public schools.

In other words, anyone who believes in the God of the Bible and of historic Christianity “has no place in the public arena.”  Farris quotes another professor, Kimberly Yuracko of Northwestern University, who is even more explicit in an article in the California Law Review (notice yet again that this is a completely premeditated, thoroughly peer-reviewed public pronouncement).  Yuracko says:

. . . parental control over children’s basic education flows from the state (rather than vice versa). States delegate power over children’s basic education to parents, and the delegation itself is necessarily subject to constitutional constraints.

Wow.  The states delegate decision making power over children to the parents?  It’s harder to imagine a balder expression of a totalitarian worldview.  And take note: the specific occasion here may be homeschooling, but the activist social engineers take the same approach to any institution or belief system that they believe stands in the way of achieving their “tolerant” utopia.  That’s why they direct so much of their fire at the Church and at the Traditional Family.

     I find the behavior and ideas expressed above to be outrageous.  I believe that most Americans (and most other people, for that matter) would also find them outrageous, and would be amazed at how widespread they are.  They will not find out about these things from the mainstream media outlets, as we have seen.  Remarking on the lessons learned from totalitarian governments in the mid twentieth century, Henri de Lubac said: "It is not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organize the world without God. What is true is that, without God, he can only organize it against man."  Unfortunately, there is a relatively small but tirelessly committed cadre working non-stop to try it one more time.  If we who know better do not speak up, who will?