Apathy Online

Today, I was talk­ing with a Chris­t­ian coworker, and men­tioned that some Chris­tians refuse to stand for a judge because they view all humans as equals. My coworker seemed per­plexed by the idea, thought it was silly, and barely avoided stat­ing that peo­ple who try to bring such beliefs into a court set­ting should be arrested. His rea­son­ing was that it was merely show­ing respect for the judge and has noth­ing to do with wor­ship. I do not nec­es­sar­ily believe that my coworker is wrong in stand­ing for a judge, should he be in a posi­tion to stand before one. How­ever, he does not believe in giv­ing oth­ers the abil­ity to live by their con­vic­tions, includ­ing other Chris­tians. While I believe it is a mat­ter between the a per­son and God, I view such Quakers/Christians/etc. that live their con­vic­tions as heroes. These are peo­ple who are will­ing to risk impris­on­ment for abid­ing by their con­science. As a for­mer pas­tor of mine pointed out, Cae­sar does not own your con­science, God does.

There is a rea­son why this both­ered me. I was try­ing to probe my cowork­ers beliefs (pri­mar­ily because he will dis­cuss ‘reli­gion’ or Christ with every other coworker but me, except to invite me to his church, but also because of my curios­ity). I have been try­ing to see what kind of a Chris­t­ian he was, and if he had good rea­sons for his beliefs. Per­haps my con­clu­sion is unfair, but he seems to be a typ­i­cal ‘con­ser­v­a­tive’ type: he con­fuses faith in Christ with an unques­tion­ing accep­tance of every­thing taught to him in a Chris­t­ian set­ting. Unfor­tu­nately, it seems as if the major­ity of Chris­tians I meet are this way.

What kind of Chris­tians are we if we believe this way? Of what value is our faith? We can quote scrip­ture ver­ba­tim, but our only under­stand­ing is what has been taught to us. Peo­ple ask us how to get to Heaven, and we imme­di­ately spit out an answer, with­out know­ing if it is true. It was just taught to us. Frankly, I am not cer­tain if most Chris­tians even know why they believe what they believe. At all. A cab dri­ver pointed this out to me years ago when he asked me some ques­tions about my faith. Since then, I have tried very hard to make sure my beliefs are con­sis­tent and true. (Does any­one remem­ber read­ing Philip­pi­ans 2:12?) Some do not really care to do this, and get their con­sis­tent and true beliefs on Sundays.

Mod­ern Chris­tian­ity seem to be no bet­ter than the other the­o­ries of life or reli­gions it derides. It rests sim­ply on a teach­ing that has been passed down from mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions of teach­ers in a game of gen­er­a­tional tele­phone with the cur­rent teach­ing being incred­i­bly far from the truth it once showed, and there is no desire to go to the begin­ning and rework our beliefs as nec­es­sary. We say to our­selves that “This is what we were taught, and any devi­a­tion from it is heresy.” Some­one raises an objec­tion to our beliefs and instead of hav­ing an answer or research­ing the ques­tion, we cite prob­lems with the ques­tioner. Did we not read from the Bible that we pro­claim to be true with­out know­ing why that we should study (2 Tim 2:15)? We are offended by Chris­tians in jail, for­get­ting in the Bible, per­se­cu­tion is nor­mal. For­get­ting God’s com­mand­ments, we try to force oth­ers to live the way we want. We advo­cate theft in Christ’s name. We serve some­one other than the Jesus in the Bible, and oth­ers know this. They mock us, not to per­se­cute us, but because our brand of chris­tian­ity deserves mock­ing. They are offended by us, because we offend them, and not because the core of our belief itself is offen­sive. We even have rules just like the reli­gious lead­ers Jesus crit­i­cized, but we have very intri­cate rea­sons for why our rules are not like theirs. We com­plain of peo­ple pick­ing and choos­ing what parts of the Bible they believe, but it may bet­ter to do that with a con­sis­tent belief than to man­date that every­thing be included for the sole rea­son of a vote long ago while tak­ing what we man­date as included and twist­ing and per­vert­ing it in ways the orig­i­nal authors/Author did not intend. There is a lot wrong with our chris­tian­ity! It’s not Christian!

To be fair, people’s beliefs change over time, and I too was once a zombie-christian: eat­ing the brains of other chris­tians to sus­tain me. Per­haps I am still that way to a degree (I’ve changed, hon­est!). Maybe this is a rant more about myself than a plea for oth­ers to con­sider them­selves. I could fill the rest of this spot with Philip­pi­ans 2:12, but I doubt it would help; I’ve read pas­sages hun­dreds of times before under­stand­ing them, and hun­dreds of times more before real­iz­ing I was abid­ing solely by a teach­ing rather than what the pas­sage plainly said. Per­haps it’s worth scrap­ping our ideas and rebuild­ing them from scratch?
And the ques­tion now is “what do I believe?” I believe that there is a Cre­ator. I believe that He came down in the form of Christ to show us how to live. I believe that he took the pun­ish­ment of the world when He died on the cross because he loved us, and to show us what love truly is: not killing or oppress­ing oth­ers because they don’t believe like you, but sac­ri­fic­ing your­self for oth­ers out of love for them. I believe that when Jesus stated that the great­est com­mand­ments were to love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neigh­bor as your­self, that He meant it. I believe all scrip­ture should be inter­preted in light of these two verses.

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On the radio a few weeks ago, some gospel artist called a talk show and tried to pro­mote her music. She called Free Talk Live. I think the pur­pose of her call was “God is judg­ing this nation, and because Amer­i­cans are unsaved sin­ners, to avoid judge­ment you must pray and ask Jesus to come into your heart, and lis­ten to my music at my website-” The show’s hosts cut her off and started ask­ing her ques­tions. Now, I am used to unsaved peo­ple ask­ing non­sense ques­tions just because they want to make a Chris­t­ian look stu­pid, but these asked her legit­i­mate ques­tions based on the verse she mis­quoted, and how she applied it. The verse is 2 Chron­i­cles 7:14.

If my peo­ple, which are called by my name, shall hum­ble them­selves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will for­give their sin, and will heal their land.

And of course, she said it was because of all the non-christians in Amer­ica that we were in this sit­u­a­tion. One of the ques­tions asked was, “does this mean that God is judg­ing Amer­ica because of the actions of a few peo­ple?” and she said no. Then the rest of the con­ver­sa­tion descended into a series of “why this” and “because Jesus said so” and I turned off the radio. It was the 3rd “chris­t­ian” caller and their igno­rance and inabil­ity to think that they may not know every­thing made me sick.
Today, dur­ing the ser­vice, I was think­ing about that while the pas­tor preached a mes­sage using events that may not have nec­es­sar­ily hap­pened as his “text”, and then I got an idea.

The cur­rent judge­ment of Amer­ica is the fault of the Church. If Chris­tians did what we were sup­posed to do, there would be no Fed­eral Reserve, no IRS, no gov­ern­ment schools, or any of the tyranny we are fac­ing now. If Chris­tians hum­bled them­selves, and prayed, they would have real­ized what were at the begin­nings of the col­lapse we see now. We are not just fac­ing what may be judge­ment, but the log­i­cal con­se­quences of a Church that ignored Bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples and ran their lives accord­ing to what they felt was right and chris­t­ian. And because of we ignored God, we have an ille­git­i­mate gov­ern­ment that runs con­trary to the way we cre­ated, and our soci­ety and econ­omy are collapsing.

Many Amer­i­cans have protested the actions of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, but their num­bers could have been greater if there was greater church par­tic­i­pa­tion. Pas­tors across the nation then should have shouted from their pul­pits: “This is wrong! They can’t do this! Every­one gather to stop these immoral actions!” The ral­ly­ing cry should have once more been, “No king but King Jesus!” Unfor­tu­nately, from what I see of todays churches, the atti­tude was prob­a­bly an apa­thetic, “We may not like it but we must obey!” At most, they might have said, “Lets do noth­ing and pray!” They would have been bet­ter off say­ing, “let’s roll over and die!”

We have not read our Bibles, we have not edu­cated our­selves or the peo­ple around us, and we have abdi­cated our respon­si­bil­i­ties as Chris­tians to be salt and light, preser­v­a­tives in this world, and our nation. We did not fol­low God as we should have. With­out the sup­port of the Chris­tians, the peo­ple who would do right could not stop the injus­tice and grow­ing tyranny. There would have not enough peo­ple to do so. And with­out the Chris­tians stand­ing for what is right, and edu­cat­ing oth­ers on (at the very least) Bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples, the US declined. Instead of the Church respond­ing to the decline of soci­ety by becom­ing respon­si­ble again, we pushed for more laws think­ing that the gov­ern­ment could pre­serve soci­ety bet­ter. These laws grad­u­ally became increas­ingly tyran­ni­cal, and the gov­ern­ment used these laws to expand its pow­ers. And now we live in this present social­ist oli­garchy that is tee­ter­ing on collapse.

So, yes, this nation is suf­fer­ing judge­ment because of the inac­tion of just a group of peo­ple: the Chris­tians. It is not, how­ever, God hav­ing to judge every­one because of the sins of a few, but rather the con­se­quences of Chris­t­ian apa­thy demands such judgement!

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The fol­low­ing is an essay writ­ten by my friend, Josh, about the lat­est mil­i­tary pro­pa­ganda. It is cross­posted here.

“So don’t tell me who’s wrong and right.” So begins a song entirely absent of moral­ity, a song intended to glo­rify death and destruc­tion, a song meant to indoc­tri­nate your chil­dren – a song your tax dol­lars paid for. As if it weren’t bad enough that many thou­sands of national guards­men, who signed up for free tuition and other perks, are deployed and dying on for­eign soil, the National Guard has intro­duced a new tool for recruit­ment, employ­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of wartime pro­pa­ganda. Appar­ently, not enough of our cit­i­zens are sign­ing up to kill in the name of the state, and there­fore, the National Guard, with the aide of your tax dol­lars, has teamed up with promi­nent artist, Kid Rock, to pro­duce a music video that would have made even Adolph Hitler proud.

The song is enti­tled “Amer­i­can War­rior,” and in the begin­ning of the song, we are told exactly what the rules are in time of cri­sis: “So don’t tell me who’s wrong and right, when lib­erty starts slip­ping away.” I sup­pose the overt mes­sage is sup­posed to be that we should sup­port our troops, and not bother with tri­fles such as right or wrong when our secu­rity is at stake. But look at the clear word­ing, which does not say “secu­rity,” and you see the true mes­sage soon to be crudely artic­u­lated in this clever piece of pro­pa­ganda. The ref­er­ence to “lib­erty slip­ping away” clearly describes the sit­u­a­tion we in Amer­ica find our­selves in due to actions of our own gov­ern­ment! Ter­ror­ists affect secu­rity – not lib­erty! Lib­erty is an issue of gov­ern­ment. So, while the rest of the song is going to glo­rify the state killers and serv­ing in our government’s forces, the first line of this song has set the tone, indi­cat­ing that we shouldn’t worry about right and wrong when the gov­ern­ment is con­fis­cat­ing our lib­er­ties. The action we are not to judge, as sub­tly com­mu­ni­cated by the singer, is com­ing not from some for­eign aggres­sor, but from our very own gov­ern­ment. Make no mis­take – what looks and sounds like a good ol’ piece of Amer­i­cana, is in fact pro­pa­ganda with a mes­sage of com­pli­ance and state killing. In this arti­cle we will ana­lyze this sin­is­ter mes­sage, the way it is expressed, and who is behind its expression.

Who is Kid Rock? Many of the peo­ple who might sup­port such a music video that proudly “sup­ports our troops,” should be out­raged to learn just what kind of per­son our “pow­ers that be” hired to act as their pied piper. Evan­gel­i­cals across the nation can be heard spew­ing their igno­rant sup­port for the unscrip­tural U.S. mil­i­tary, yet it might inter­est them to know just a lit­tle about this man who sings their anthem. Kid Rock has been known for his con­tro­ver­sial mate­r­ial for over a decade now, even hav­ing at least one song banned by the Fed­eral Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion (FCC) for its graphic and explicit sex­ual per­ver­sion and immorality[1]. Indeed, many of his songs, the titles of which are too explicit to even name, exhibit an obses­sion with explicit, per­verted forms of sex­ual immorality.

But it is his occul­tic themes that are the most dis­turb­ing. Kid Rock has a very clear agenda: to cap­ture our youth, and influ­ence them to fol­low Satan’s way, rather than the true Way – Jesus Christ. In his song, “I Am the Bull­god,” he sings, “I’m the bull­god, you under­stand, the ille­git­i­mate ‘son of man’…I’m gonna get you…I wanna flood the world with my twisted thoughts.” And this self-proclaimed anti-Christ does flood the world with his twisted thoughts quite heav­ily in this lat­est out­rage, “Amer­i­can War­rior.” The bull­god is, of course, a ref­er­ence to Satan. And in light of this, it makes per­fect sense to see, in our par­tic­u­lar mil­i­tary music video, scenes of troops jump­ing up and down to the beat, hys­ter­i­cally hold­ing out their hands in the form of the devil’s horns, a well-known sym­bol of the Satanic wor­ship in the world of hard rock. In another of Kid Rock’s songs, “Rock N Roll Jesus,” he screams, “You don’t need a bible…I’m gonna set you free…Testify. It’s all sex, drugs, rock n’ roll…I’m your rock n’ roll Jesus, yes I am…get on your knees! I’m your rock n’ roll Jesus.” This blas­phe­mer sounds like the per­fect can­di­date for a pro­pa­ganda music film spon­sored by the U.S mil­i­tary. The mes­sage is the same: serve the devil, whether it be through sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll – or through killing your fel­low man.

In addi­tion to the per­verted, occul­tic, and vio­lent Kid Rock, who has pled “no con­test” to charges of assault and bat­tery on three dif­fer­ent occa­sions [2], this pro­pa­ganda piece also treats us to scenes of Dale Earn­hardt, Jr. cruis­ing down vic­tory lane with a grin on his face, while his fel­low rac­ers wreck and burst into flames. Iron­i­cally, this vin­dic­tive and overly-aggressive style of com­pe­ti­tion is pre­sented along­side cap­tions that read “I am a mem­ber of a team.” “Amer­i­can War­rior” presents us with oppos­ing ideals, play­ing to the car­nal man’s desire for destruc­tion and dom­i­na­tion, while appear­ing to glo­rify team­work and civil­ity. Keep in mind, Chris­t­ian, that this is the same Dale Earn­hardt, Jr. who made his mil­lions from pro­mot­ing a pop­u­lar brand of alco­hol, which has wrecked lives all over this nation, and is strictly for­bid­den in Scrip­ture. Chris­tians should rec­og­nize this bad fruit as evi­dence of a bad tree, and ask them­selves why the U.S. gov­ern­ment would join forces with these evil men in push­ing their mes­sage of killing for the state and com­ply­ing with gov­ern­ment infringe­ments in time of war. Per­haps the tree is just as wicked and cor­rupt as the fruit.

In the book of Daniel, chap­ter 3, we find another exam­ple of a cor­rupt gov­ern­ment demand­ing alle­giance to and wor­ship of a false god. But even in Bible times, I sup­pose bow­ing down to an image of gold, fash­ioned by some of the very sub­jects who were now being com­manded to wor­ship it, might seem just a lit­tle ridicu­lous. But Neb­uchad­nez­zar had just the right ingre­di­ent to add to the mix. This addi­tional ingre­di­ent would cre­ate an aura of great­ness and cred­i­bil­ity. It would inspire them to wor­ship this false god. And what was this addi­tional ingre­di­ent? We find it men­tioned in verse 7: “There­fore at that time, when all the peo­ple heard the sound of the cor­net, flute, harp, sack­but, psaltery, and all kinds of musick, all the peo­ple, the nations, and the lan­guages, fell down and wor­shipped the golden image.” Like­wise, at the sound of scream­ing gui­tars and puls­ing drums, Amer­i­cans in gen­eral, includ­ing oth­er­wise God-fearing Chris­tians, fall down and wor­ship the false god of the mil­i­tary. They excuse their crimes and cor­rup­tion, and hold them on a plat­form higher than they hold most preach­ers. In so doing, they are in vio­la­tion of not only Romans 1:32, but also of the very first of God’s com­mand­ments, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Pro­pa­ganda is no new trick. Adolph Hitler was able to employ clever uses of pro­pa­ganda to the same end, and con­vinced an oth­er­wise peace­able nation to invade other nations and kill in the name of the state in vio­la­tion of the sixth com­mand­ment. Many of these sol­diers even claimed to be Chris­tians. And like the U.S. gov­ern­ment, Hitler knew to appeal, not to supe­rior argu­ments or ethics, but rather to sense­less brain­wash­ing, using the com­mon and base things that the masses could receive with­out think­ing twice. He stated in Mein Kampf:

All pro­pa­ganda must be pre­sented in a pop­u­lar form and must fix its intel­lec­tual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intel­lec­tual of those to whom it is directed. Thus its purely intel­lec­tual level will have to be that of the low­est men­tal com­mon denom­i­na­tor among the pub­lic it is desired to reach [3].

And true to this model, “Amer­i­can War­rior” most cer­tainly appeals to the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor, fea­tur­ing scum like Kid Rock, while giv­ing the masses lit­tle more than empty slo­gans and scream­ing i
nstru­ments. In fact, while Kid Rock is scream­ing “war­rior,” the video shows friendly troops hold­ing fully auto­matic rifles (which they pre­sum­ably never use) while play­ing ball with vil­lage chil­dren in their occu­pied, middle-eastern vil­lage. In the busi­ness world, this is known as bait-and-switch. While appeal­ing to the car­nal rage and pride of the masses, the video shows virtue and kind­ness. This is pro­pa­ganda that appeals to the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor, rather than to supe­rior ideas.

The base pas­sions of men are once again appealed to when a scene shows troops kick­ing in the doors of homes and con­fis­cat­ing the weapons these peo­ple might have used in self defense. You can prac­ti­cally smell the testos­terone in the air, as the pride of life swells within the viewer to the sound of “I’m an Amer­i­can War­rior!” as vil­lagers are force­fully dis­armed. “I will never quit” flashes across the screen, and logic is sus­pended as NRA mem­bers and 2nd amend­ment advo­cates watch­ing this pro­pa­ganda grin and nod their heads to the beat in approval of this vio­la­tion of a God-given right to self-defense.

Kid Rock then sings “I’m a sol­dier in war, a cit­i­zen in peace,” as scenes cut across the screen of the National Guard help­ing put out a fire in an Amer­i­can neigh­bor­hood. But what we should be see­ing at this time might be scenes of these “cit­i­zens in peace” beat­ing down doors in New Orleans after Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina, and con­fis­cat­ing guns from cit­i­zens, leav­ing them help­less and vul­ner­a­ble in their own homes. Next, a cap­tion flashes across the screen, “I am the guardian of free­dom” as the scene shows chil­dren grate­fully throng­ing these heroes. But the scene should more accu­rately por­tray guards­men oper­at­ing unmanned drone air­craft in mis­sile attacks on civil­ian women and chil­dren in Pak­istani vil­lages on a weekly basis. But alas, this is the dif­fer­ence between fac­tual real­ity and the real­ity of propaganda.

Chris­tians need to wake up, and not fol­low the tune of the pied piper. Like the three Hebrew boys, we need to refuse to bow when the state hires super­stars to sing our senses to sleep. When our national pride pro­motes evil actions, we should reject this tree of death and mur­der. We should not fall for this beguil­ing ruse to steal our youth away in the name of national secu­rity and patri­o­tism. The state is not above God’s law or above pub­lic scrutiny. Like the chil­dren of Israel in the Old Tes­ta­ment, we should not offer our young to the fires of the god of Moloch. We should wor­ship the one, true God, and His Word. All of our actions and emo­tions, should fall in line with God’s Word. The U.S. gov­ern­ment says “kill.” But God’s Word says “Thou shalt not kill.” The U.S. gov­ern­ment says “Sus­pend rea­son­ing, and accel­er­ate your life — be all you can be.” But God’s Word says “[Cast] down imag­i­na­tions, and every high thing that exal­teth itself against the knowl­edge of God.” The U.S. gov­ern­ment says “Be an Amer­i­can War­rior!” But God’s Word says “Blessed are the peace­mak­ers.” It is time we heed the words of God, and reject U.S. pro­pa­ganda of car­nal­ity and carnage.

1. “State Uni­ver­sity of New York, WSUC (FM), Cort­land, NY Notice of Appar­ent Lia­bil­ity.”
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Mass_Media/Orders/1998/fcc98179.txt. Retrieved: 14 May
2009.

2. See: The Asso­ci­ated Press (2005–06-16). “Kid Rock sued for $575,000 over assault at jons house.”
http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=38135. Retrieved: 14 May 2009;
“Kid Rock Cited for Mis­de­meanor Assault”. Moono.com (UGO Net­works). 9 Nov. 2007.
http://www.moono.com/news/news05595.html. Retrieved: 14 May 2009;
The Asso­ci­ated Press (2008–07-22). “Waf­fle House brawl costs Kid Rock $1,000.” CNN (Turner Broad­cast­ing
Sys­tem, Inc). http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Music/07/22/kid.rock.ap/index.html?iref=newssearch. Retrieved: 14 May 2009.

3. Hitler, Adolph. Mein Kampf. 1939. Trans. Hurst and Blacket LTD. Lon­don.
http://world.std.com/obi/Adolph.Hitler/unpacked/mkv1ch06.html. Retrieved: 14 May 2009.

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