Michael Bresciani
The PC wars of 2010 and beyond - - spiritual wickedness in high places
By Michael Bresciani
How we love to say that when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor she awakened a sleeping giant. We hate to hear that when the giant went back to sleep a generation of progressive liberalism snuck into the textbooks, the minds and, now; very deeply into the hearts of our young.
For almost an entire generation we have thrust a two pronged socialistic pitch fork at the minds of our youth. One prong is marked 'disdain of nationalism' or national pride from which patriotism is fed but not born. The other prong is marked rejection of all orthodox religion but mostly the Judeo Christian heritage, from which America's patriotism was indeed born; altered textbooks notwithstanding.
One of the latest skirmishes in the PC Wars has been the removal of the Focus on the Family ad from the online pages of the NCAA. The ad starts with the caption "Celebrate Family — Celebrate Life," is simple and beautiful and explains the desire of a father to see his son choose a right path in life. The ad says, "All I want for my son is for him to grow up knowing how to do the right thing."
Jemu Green, the president of Women's Media Center told Fox's Bill O'Reilly that it wasn't a bad ad but it served to lure people to the Focus on the Family site which she described as "intolerant, divisive, and homophobic, anti choice and anti women." A visit to the Focus on the Family site will quickly dispel all the heightened rhetoric of Ms. Green, but even that is not the point. The real question is whether the 14th amendment is enough for the homosexuals and whether the first amendment is still enough for people of faith. You remember, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Worthy of note was Dennis Miller's response to Jemu's agitated response to the questions O'Reilly posed. Miller said who could have guessed that "Big Brother would appear in the guise of the selectively righteous sistah."
Ms. Green said that Focus was afraid that "gay people will destroy America." This is the place where proper definition and perhaps finding another word to deal with things might, come in real handy. PC rigidity can get out of hand quickly as in the recent fire bombings of Christian churches in Malaysia by Muslims who resented the Christians for using or even saying the word "Allah." Add to this footnote the fact that in Malaysia homosexuality is illegal and heavily punished. Oddly, neither Focus on the Family or Women's Media Center would be welcome at all in Malaysia and a half dozen other counties worldwide.
But let's get back to America and her PC wars; first by taking a hard look at a word that is inappropriate, poorly defined, and overused but has gained a lot of mileage of late and thereby has hurt many people. The word is the noun homophobia and its divisive little cousin the adjective, homophobic. The most basic definition of homophobia is that it is an irrational fear of homosexuals and homosexuality. In over forty years of discussion with Christians about homosexuals I have never met one single person who said they were afraid of homosexuals. It is that fact that drove me to search for the root cause of the entire debate between the gays and the church.
Christians exercising their first amendment right to their religion are not succeeding or failing based on the exercise of that right. They are driven by their surrender to their God and Savior. It goes without saying that most of them are not visionaries who've been blessed with extra biblical apparitions. Most are those who have put their trust in the things God has said and shown to them in the revelation of his Son Jesus Christ.
It is there in God's word that they find many warnings that when individuals or nations begin to allow unbridled licentious behavior that God will intervene with appropriate responses. The rest of the world looks at the same thing but only as a problem (issue, in modern vernacular) not as a promise. They look on the daily reports of abused children, sexual indulgence, profanity, serial murders, rape and crime in general but somehow miss the connection between their own allowances and their present troubles. They not only could care less for the warnings but many would argue to the death that they were never warned at all.
If fear is rising it is among the homosexuals not the Christians and that is evidenced by the common use of the term homophobic and the rare use of terms like Christophobic or Bibliophobic. God's word does not call anyone to fear but rather to re-consciousness. It is what calls out to us when we are skirting the outer fringes; it is the clarion call to return to the flock where the Shepherd keeps watch. It is about love; not fear. In fact the call to "fear not" is used 62 times in the Bible.
We trust the God who cannot lie, not to change his mind and give us a whole new set of rules just because the times they are a changing. In fact it is God's promise that he will not change his edicts, statutes, restrictions or commands that assure us, even though the world is in a great storm; God is always an immovable rock. Men change with the times but God orders the times and lays down his guide in every moment of time so no one will stumble. Proof of this is found in the following verse.
"God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?" (Nu 23:19)
The Apostle Paul said Christ was the same yesterday, today and forever. (Heb 13:8) The Prophet Malachi speaking in God's stead said "I change not." (Mal 3:6) James the Apostle said that in God there is no "variableness of turning." (James 1:17)
When the Christian asks himself about Old Testament passages that decry men lying with men or women with women or when they read that such practices are labeled as abominations by God as in the first chapter of Romans they don't suddenly get fearful. They first realize that these are parameters set by the only one who has authority to set them in the first place. What follows is obedience; if telling others about it is called for, then obedience is what follows yet again. No mystery here, no fear and no axe to grind with anyone in particular, only a love for everyone in general.
Obeying God's word isn't an attitude it is a predisposition based on surrender, for all Bible believers, anything less is hypocritical and foolhardy. For years those who could not find anything truly wrong with the practicing church have hidden behind the spineless adage "the Church is full of hypocrites." Doesn't it seem a bit ironic that when the true church is found obedient and true they are then labeled as haters?
I have both studied and directly encountered witch crafters, cult leaders and atheists in my time. I have addressed the rants of the most notable atheists and agnostics and publicly debated with Madelyn O'Hare on radio, yet I never saw such groups or people as the most serious threat to a nation or the church. The real dangers are to be found in alignment with pop culture norms and sexual revolution tripe and of course the new purveyors and practitioners of modernity's PC.
There are far few witches and warlocks than people who are willing to swallow everything that the PC pushers have to offer at the moment. Some forty years ago I could not have known the full meaning of this passage of scripture as I do today.
"But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." (2 Co: 4: 3-4)
No Christian who is Biblically grounded thinks of themselves as in a fearful battle against gays or any other modern day emergent group. What we battle against is blindness in total. It is about our obedience to God and our love for the souls of men and women throughout this world. Paul said it this way.
"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." (Ephesians 6:12)
© Michael Bresciani
March 7, 2010
How we love to say that when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor she awakened a sleeping giant. We hate to hear that when the giant went back to sleep a generation of progressive liberalism snuck into the textbooks, the minds and, now; very deeply into the hearts of our young.
For almost an entire generation we have thrust a two pronged socialistic pitch fork at the minds of our youth. One prong is marked 'disdain of nationalism' or national pride from which patriotism is fed but not born. The other prong is marked rejection of all orthodox religion but mostly the Judeo Christian heritage, from which America's patriotism was indeed born; altered textbooks notwithstanding.
One of the latest skirmishes in the PC Wars has been the removal of the Focus on the Family ad from the online pages of the NCAA. The ad starts with the caption "Celebrate Family — Celebrate Life," is simple and beautiful and explains the desire of a father to see his son choose a right path in life. The ad says, "All I want for my son is for him to grow up knowing how to do the right thing."
Jemu Green, the president of Women's Media Center told Fox's Bill O'Reilly that it wasn't a bad ad but it served to lure people to the Focus on the Family site which she described as "intolerant, divisive, and homophobic, anti choice and anti women." A visit to the Focus on the Family site will quickly dispel all the heightened rhetoric of Ms. Green, but even that is not the point. The real question is whether the 14th amendment is enough for the homosexuals and whether the first amendment is still enough for people of faith. You remember, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Worthy of note was Dennis Miller's response to Jemu's agitated response to the questions O'Reilly posed. Miller said who could have guessed that "Big Brother would appear in the guise of the selectively righteous sistah."
Ms. Green said that Focus was afraid that "gay people will destroy America." This is the place where proper definition and perhaps finding another word to deal with things might, come in real handy. PC rigidity can get out of hand quickly as in the recent fire bombings of Christian churches in Malaysia by Muslims who resented the Christians for using or even saying the word "Allah." Add to this footnote the fact that in Malaysia homosexuality is illegal and heavily punished. Oddly, neither Focus on the Family or Women's Media Center would be welcome at all in Malaysia and a half dozen other counties worldwide.
But let's get back to America and her PC wars; first by taking a hard look at a word that is inappropriate, poorly defined, and overused but has gained a lot of mileage of late and thereby has hurt many people. The word is the noun homophobia and its divisive little cousin the adjective, homophobic. The most basic definition of homophobia is that it is an irrational fear of homosexuals and homosexuality. In over forty years of discussion with Christians about homosexuals I have never met one single person who said they were afraid of homosexuals. It is that fact that drove me to search for the root cause of the entire debate between the gays and the church.
Christians exercising their first amendment right to their religion are not succeeding or failing based on the exercise of that right. They are driven by their surrender to their God and Savior. It goes without saying that most of them are not visionaries who've been blessed with extra biblical apparitions. Most are those who have put their trust in the things God has said and shown to them in the revelation of his Son Jesus Christ.
It is there in God's word that they find many warnings that when individuals or nations begin to allow unbridled licentious behavior that God will intervene with appropriate responses. The rest of the world looks at the same thing but only as a problem (issue, in modern vernacular) not as a promise. They look on the daily reports of abused children, sexual indulgence, profanity, serial murders, rape and crime in general but somehow miss the connection between their own allowances and their present troubles. They not only could care less for the warnings but many would argue to the death that they were never warned at all.
If fear is rising it is among the homosexuals not the Christians and that is evidenced by the common use of the term homophobic and the rare use of terms like Christophobic or Bibliophobic. God's word does not call anyone to fear but rather to re-consciousness. It is what calls out to us when we are skirting the outer fringes; it is the clarion call to return to the flock where the Shepherd keeps watch. It is about love; not fear. In fact the call to "fear not" is used 62 times in the Bible.
We trust the God who cannot lie, not to change his mind and give us a whole new set of rules just because the times they are a changing. In fact it is God's promise that he will not change his edicts, statutes, restrictions or commands that assure us, even though the world is in a great storm; God is always an immovable rock. Men change with the times but God orders the times and lays down his guide in every moment of time so no one will stumble. Proof of this is found in the following verse.
"God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?" (Nu 23:19)
The Apostle Paul said Christ was the same yesterday, today and forever. (Heb 13:8) The Prophet Malachi speaking in God's stead said "I change not." (Mal 3:6) James the Apostle said that in God there is no "variableness of turning." (James 1:17)
When the Christian asks himself about Old Testament passages that decry men lying with men or women with women or when they read that such practices are labeled as abominations by God as in the first chapter of Romans they don't suddenly get fearful. They first realize that these are parameters set by the only one who has authority to set them in the first place. What follows is obedience; if telling others about it is called for, then obedience is what follows yet again. No mystery here, no fear and no axe to grind with anyone in particular, only a love for everyone in general.
Obeying God's word isn't an attitude it is a predisposition based on surrender, for all Bible believers, anything less is hypocritical and foolhardy. For years those who could not find anything truly wrong with the practicing church have hidden behind the spineless adage "the Church is full of hypocrites." Doesn't it seem a bit ironic that when the true church is found obedient and true they are then labeled as haters?
I have both studied and directly encountered witch crafters, cult leaders and atheists in my time. I have addressed the rants of the most notable atheists and agnostics and publicly debated with Madelyn O'Hare on radio, yet I never saw such groups or people as the most serious threat to a nation or the church. The real dangers are to be found in alignment with pop culture norms and sexual revolution tripe and of course the new purveyors and practitioners of modernity's PC.
There are far few witches and warlocks than people who are willing to swallow everything that the PC pushers have to offer at the moment. Some forty years ago I could not have known the full meaning of this passage of scripture as I do today.
"But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." (2 Co: 4: 3-4)
No Christian who is Biblically grounded thinks of themselves as in a fearful battle against gays or any other modern day emergent group. What we battle against is blindness in total. It is about our obedience to God and our love for the souls of men and women throughout this world. Paul said it this way.
"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." (Ephesians 6:12)
© Michael Bresciani
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