Donald Hank
Why the West is deliberately failing
By Donald Hank
The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so...
The scientific method, while still used in scientific experiments in the laboratory and clinic, has long been abandoned in the persuasive arts, notably journalism, but also in politics. Any journalist analyzing facts based on logic and science instead of accepting the interpretation of our universe handed down from above would soon lose their job. We have long lived in an anti-scientific, and hence, an anti-natural, world and are now reaping the inevitable rewards of our denial of truth.
If we were to be honest with ourselves for just a brief moment, we would admit that Western society is deeply sinful (or in secular terms, unwholesome) and even worships sin, celebrating it with carnivals and gay parades, and teaching young children how to perform sex acts in schools. And of course, the Western world routinely commits infanticide. Romans 1:25 describes the Western world to a "t" (Paul uses homosexuals as an example but this issue ranges far wider than that):
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator...
The end of that discourse on sinners describes the outcome.
...men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
A graphic depiction of some of that recompense for this particular group of sinners can be found here. I referenced that site in my commentary "The recompence of their error."
So why do people deliberately engage in self-destructive practices that our otherwise superior intelligence should be telling us to avoid for the purposes of self preservation? Or for that matter, why do they pursue Keynesian economics amassing mountains of debt that no one could ever repay in a headlong rush to destroy our economy, our means of survival? No animal species would do that.
The answer is right there in Paul's discourse, and this is the part Christians need to focus on when analyzing the causes of Western society's failure to manage its laws, its immigration, its social ills, its fruitless wars, its finances and economy, its moral code, etc:
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.
And several verses later:
God gave them over to a reprobate mind.
Did you ever consider what that means?
GOD facilitates the destruction of the disobedient and the ungrateful by abandoning the disobedient to their own sinful desires. Paul is talking about people who worship nature instead of the Creator because they were ungrateful to Him for the blessings of life. Why would people who once worshipped nature turn around and do something unnatural, as Paul calls this behavior in this same passage? A person analyzing this without spiritual discernment might say this incongruence makes no sense and would be at a loss to explain it in rational terms. Some spiritually blind (but otherwise intelligent) analysts say that for this reason, Paul couldn't really have meant "unnatural" when describing this behavior, and they therefore tweak the translation from the original Greek to make it say something else. (They forget that in the 4th Century, Jerome, a fluent speaker of koine Greek, rendered this term as "contra naturam" in his translation of the Vulgate Latin Bible).
The fact is, God routinely allows people to do the unnatural — committing acts outside the laws of nature that can't be explained by any scientific (e.g., psychological) laws. Once you turn your back on God, He abandons you and you fall into a behavior pattern designed by Satan. There is nothing natural about sinful behavior because it was not designed by God.
So if it is not natural, then is it supernatural?
No, it is not. Since God performs supernatural works — that is, works that are above nature — then Satan's works and the works of humans gone over to the dark side might best be considered as infranatural, or beneath nature. An animal would not destroy its own economy — its food stores, for example — the way Westerner "leaders" are now doing, most notablyin the Euro Zone and the US through irrational banking practices and eradication of home industry and cheap energy by legal and regulatory means (even as they encourage other nations, notably China, to use cheap energy and high carbon combustion in competing with the West). Nor would an animal devote itself almost solely to the pursuit of sex, especially homosex, the way many humans do (although bisexuality is known in the animal kingdom, there are no known strictly homosexual animal individuals that eschew all individuals of the opposite sex).
Such infranatural phenomena are exactly why we face an imminent worldwide economic collapse. Economists, supposedly specialists in math, no longer use mathematics in their convoluted Keynesian calculations. Likewise, otherwise educated people who understand human anatomy deliberately and routinely utilize as an inlet a bodily organ designed as an outlet, a lifestyle that often leads to horrific diseases and death (see here).
But as Paul says, amazingly, GOD facilitates this mindlessness by abandoning those who abandon God — including His scientific laws. Because people stopped trusting in Him and thought they could come up with their own answers. Look around you. How do you like the results of Western secularist, humanist political, diplomatic, economic, social, military, etc, behavior? Vote for either candidate and you will get more of the same. Look at Europe. An entire continent that thinks it is smarter than God is now drowning in debt and fighting for its economic life. If this is not sufficient evidence of the God that Paul describes, i.e., a God who deprives disobedient humans of their cognitive faculties, then I can't imagine what is.
This is why the West does not need more laws or a better government.
It needs a spiritual revival. And that revival will not happen without Westerners accepting the love, forgiveness and righteousness that Jesus taught, making a sincere attempt to do what is morally right as dictated by our God-given conscience. Americans, including the best and otherwise most civil and decent of us, are beating each other up because we think this is about people or the lack of wisdom of individuals or leaders. If people do this or that, or if we make this or that law or elect this or that politician, then we can get back on track. "How can this group or that group be so stupid?" they say of those who disagree with them.
But again, they ignore Paul's teachings, as recorded in another letter of his:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
If you think this is too lofty and ethereal to relate to your life and the world around you, consider the antithesis, for example, in this article on John Maynard Keynes, a homosexual and pedophile who authored our current failed economic system (bailouts rewarding bad business and banking practices and other government interventions that kill free enterprise were his brain child):
http://www.keynesatharvard.org/book/KeynesatHarvard-ch09.html
If we take to heart Paul's message in Romans 1:25-27, we can easily see it was no coincidence that Keynes was both a sexual deviant (pedophile, homosexual, etc) and the author of the most perverted economic system known to humankind.
There can be no logical or scientific explanation for Keynes' self-destructive lifestyle and destructive teachings, or of an entire civilization deliberately patterning itself after him, destroying itself economically and morally with no apparent justification. These examples of a West deliberately weakening and sabotaging itself are the best examples of unqestionably infranatural phenomena.
As incredible as it may seem to those imbued with the rigid doctrinaire humanism that is foisted on Western society by an incessant drumbeat in media, schools and universities, in cinema and on the street, Paul's brief discourse on a God having given people up to a reprobate mind is emerging as the default explanation of a civilization marching resolutely to its utter economic and moral ruin.
So why is this explanation for Western civilization's failure never raised in the churches of our nation?
Perhaps because God is giving our clergy over to the very same reprobate mind that Paul spoke of. They interpret the scriptures as though they were hopelessly outdated when in fact, these ancient writings offer the only glimpse of sanity — and hope — that is left in our reprobate world.
© Donald Hank
July 15, 2012
The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so...
The scientific method, while still used in scientific experiments in the laboratory and clinic, has long been abandoned in the persuasive arts, notably journalism, but also in politics. Any journalist analyzing facts based on logic and science instead of accepting the interpretation of our universe handed down from above would soon lose their job. We have long lived in an anti-scientific, and hence, an anti-natural, world and are now reaping the inevitable rewards of our denial of truth.
If we were to be honest with ourselves for just a brief moment, we would admit that Western society is deeply sinful (or in secular terms, unwholesome) and even worships sin, celebrating it with carnivals and gay parades, and teaching young children how to perform sex acts in schools. And of course, the Western world routinely commits infanticide. Romans 1:25 describes the Western world to a "t" (Paul uses homosexuals as an example but this issue ranges far wider than that):
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator...
The end of that discourse on sinners describes the outcome.
...men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
A graphic depiction of some of that recompense for this particular group of sinners can be found here. I referenced that site in my commentary "The recompence of their error."
So why do people deliberately engage in self-destructive practices that our otherwise superior intelligence should be telling us to avoid for the purposes of self preservation? Or for that matter, why do they pursue Keynesian economics amassing mountains of debt that no one could ever repay in a headlong rush to destroy our economy, our means of survival? No animal species would do that.
The answer is right there in Paul's discourse, and this is the part Christians need to focus on when analyzing the causes of Western society's failure to manage its laws, its immigration, its social ills, its fruitless wars, its finances and economy, its moral code, etc:
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.
And several verses later:
God gave them over to a reprobate mind.
Did you ever consider what that means?
GOD facilitates the destruction of the disobedient and the ungrateful by abandoning the disobedient to their own sinful desires. Paul is talking about people who worship nature instead of the Creator because they were ungrateful to Him for the blessings of life. Why would people who once worshipped nature turn around and do something unnatural, as Paul calls this behavior in this same passage? A person analyzing this without spiritual discernment might say this incongruence makes no sense and would be at a loss to explain it in rational terms. Some spiritually blind (but otherwise intelligent) analysts say that for this reason, Paul couldn't really have meant "unnatural" when describing this behavior, and they therefore tweak the translation from the original Greek to make it say something else. (They forget that in the 4th Century, Jerome, a fluent speaker of koine Greek, rendered this term as "contra naturam" in his translation of the Vulgate Latin Bible).
The fact is, God routinely allows people to do the unnatural — committing acts outside the laws of nature that can't be explained by any scientific (e.g., psychological) laws. Once you turn your back on God, He abandons you and you fall into a behavior pattern designed by Satan. There is nothing natural about sinful behavior because it was not designed by God.
So if it is not natural, then is it supernatural?
No, it is not. Since God performs supernatural works — that is, works that are above nature — then Satan's works and the works of humans gone over to the dark side might best be considered as infranatural, or beneath nature. An animal would not destroy its own economy — its food stores, for example — the way Westerner "leaders" are now doing, most notablyin the Euro Zone and the US through irrational banking practices and eradication of home industry and cheap energy by legal and regulatory means (even as they encourage other nations, notably China, to use cheap energy and high carbon combustion in competing with the West). Nor would an animal devote itself almost solely to the pursuit of sex, especially homosex, the way many humans do (although bisexuality is known in the animal kingdom, there are no known strictly homosexual animal individuals that eschew all individuals of the opposite sex).
Such infranatural phenomena are exactly why we face an imminent worldwide economic collapse. Economists, supposedly specialists in math, no longer use mathematics in their convoluted Keynesian calculations. Likewise, otherwise educated people who understand human anatomy deliberately and routinely utilize as an inlet a bodily organ designed as an outlet, a lifestyle that often leads to horrific diseases and death (see here).
But as Paul says, amazingly, GOD facilitates this mindlessness by abandoning those who abandon God — including His scientific laws. Because people stopped trusting in Him and thought they could come up with their own answers. Look around you. How do you like the results of Western secularist, humanist political, diplomatic, economic, social, military, etc, behavior? Vote for either candidate and you will get more of the same. Look at Europe. An entire continent that thinks it is smarter than God is now drowning in debt and fighting for its economic life. If this is not sufficient evidence of the God that Paul describes, i.e., a God who deprives disobedient humans of their cognitive faculties, then I can't imagine what is.
This is why the West does not need more laws or a better government.
It needs a spiritual revival. And that revival will not happen without Westerners accepting the love, forgiveness and righteousness that Jesus taught, making a sincere attempt to do what is morally right as dictated by our God-given conscience. Americans, including the best and otherwise most civil and decent of us, are beating each other up because we think this is about people or the lack of wisdom of individuals or leaders. If people do this or that, or if we make this or that law or elect this or that politician, then we can get back on track. "How can this group or that group be so stupid?" they say of those who disagree with them.
But again, they ignore Paul's teachings, as recorded in another letter of his:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
If you think this is too lofty and ethereal to relate to your life and the world around you, consider the antithesis, for example, in this article on John Maynard Keynes, a homosexual and pedophile who authored our current failed economic system (bailouts rewarding bad business and banking practices and other government interventions that kill free enterprise were his brain child):
http://www.keynesatharvard.org/book/KeynesatHarvard-ch09.html
If we take to heart Paul's message in Romans 1:25-27, we can easily see it was no coincidence that Keynes was both a sexual deviant (pedophile, homosexual, etc) and the author of the most perverted economic system known to humankind.
There can be no logical or scientific explanation for Keynes' self-destructive lifestyle and destructive teachings, or of an entire civilization deliberately patterning itself after him, destroying itself economically and morally with no apparent justification. These examples of a West deliberately weakening and sabotaging itself are the best examples of unqestionably infranatural phenomena.
As incredible as it may seem to those imbued with the rigid doctrinaire humanism that is foisted on Western society by an incessant drumbeat in media, schools and universities, in cinema and on the street, Paul's brief discourse on a God having given people up to a reprobate mind is emerging as the default explanation of a civilization marching resolutely to its utter economic and moral ruin.
So why is this explanation for Western civilization's failure never raised in the churches of our nation?
Perhaps because God is giving our clergy over to the very same reprobate mind that Paul spoke of. They interpret the scriptures as though they were hopelessly outdated when in fact, these ancient writings offer the only glimpse of sanity — and hope — that is left in our reprobate world.
© Donald Hank
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