Michael Bresciani
Money and celebrity the new substitute for justice in America
By Michael Bresciani
Is leftism rising to the defense of evil even as it sinks to the depths of hell? Perhaps this question would have made a better title for this article but why scare readers away with what may only be construed as preachers pious platitudes.
America is busy with economic problems, the war in Afghanistan and healthcare issues, whose got time for questions of morality or theological issues? Apparently no one! While all the current issues are worthy of our attention isn't it odd that we tend to dismiss the very issue that we ultimately ignore at the price of our own peril?
The CBS News Crimesider reported on October 5, 2009 that Roman Polanski the accused child rapist agreed to pay to make it go away. "15 years after he fled the United States, film director — and child rapist — Roman Polanski agreed to pay his sexual assault victim $500,000 to settle a lawsuit, according to court documents."
Whether offered by the accused or extracted by civil proceedings we may be getting all too accustomed to the idea that money is a good substitute for justice. We know what O.J. had to pay and the huge sums Michael Jackson coughed up are now public record but do we actually accept this as reasonable payment for behavior or crimes that the common man would be asked to pay for with his own skin?
Now it is not just money but the weight of celebrity that is being leveraged to get the courts to stop the usual slow grinding of the wheels of justice. Celebrities who have weighed in for Polanski are the same ones who would have little mercy if the accused were a protestant minister, a catholic priest or a conservative senator or congressmen. Hollywood and leftism go hand in hand as in 'how could they get away with what they have shown us lately from the land of filmdom if they weren't liberals?' Apples don't grow on the Sycamore.
All liberals don't agree with the few Hollywood celebs that have stood up for Polanski and as the backlash grows against those who have, it is not that all liberals speak for Hollywood but rather can we afford to forget that it is more often than not that Hollywood speaks for the liberals. Some liberals are chiming in against giving Polanski a pass but is it because they actually have a conscience or is it the close proximity of the 2010 elections? You decide.
So what is the 'issue we ignore at our own peril?' What is it that we tend to label as 'preachers pious platitudes?' In fact it is that reminder in both scripture and history that when a nation begins to disregard the precious life of its own offspring it is in the throws and last gasps of its very existence.
If 50 million abortions weren't enough, as if trafficking in children weren't enough, as if the disappearance of 50,000 children a year in America weren't enough, as if exposing kindergarteners to the aspects of the gay life weren't enough, will we now add the lessening of the punishment to child rapists to the pot? Have we crossed the line from just flirting with God's judgment to outright asking for it? According to scripture we have.
Prior to ancient Israel's final fall which resulted in their being banished to all of the nations to be endlessly persecuted and hated (Diaspora) they literally went in circles. They would start with complete adherence to God's laws and statutes and in time would submit to the religions, cultures and practices of the surrounding nations until they were chastised (usually by warfare, pestilence, diseases and captivity) when they had enough they, would cry out to God again. He would send those prophets, judges and rulers that would deliver them. But they would only start around again in the vicious cycle.
Some things appeared in their national behavior each and every time they fell to the low end of the cycle. They always succumbed to the same sins but somehow managed to forget their past as a generation or two passed into history. The acceptance of sodomy, idolatry, licentiousness and child abuse were always at the heart of their fall.
Their child abuse went as far as it could go when coupled with aligning themselves to the idolatries of the surrounding nations. They sunk so far as to offer their children to be burned in the fires lit to honor the ancient idols of the god Moloch. While they sought the favor of idols made of wood and stone, the living God who bore them from the womb grew disgusted.
"Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem: but he did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord, like David his father: For he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, and made also molten images for Baalim. Moreover he burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel. (2 Chr 28: 1-3)
The King Ahaz did it and the people joined him in the burning of their own children. But Israel still managed to do it again until they were finally kicked out of their homeland for a period of nearly 2,500 years and would not become a free and independent nation again until 1948.
Among the many sins of mankind child abuse stands in a class by itself. In the scriptures it marks the final phase of a rift between God and any particular nation. Is America approaching this critical point with its abortions, child abductions and abuse and the coddling of child rapists?
We can discuss the stimulus package and the healthcare bill until we are unable to speak but to ignore these warnings of scripture will surely be our worst nightmare. This is my pious platitude of which I am not the least bit ashamed.
Pondering the use of 'Is leftism rising to the defense of evil even as it sinks to the depths of hell' as the alternate title for this piece takes on a whole new meaning when it is known that the very place where the Israelites offered their children to be burned was later referred to as hell by Jesus Christ. In fact it is the term used to this day.
The place where the children were offered, a vast open area to the south of Jerusalem where refuse was dumped and where fires and worms were always festering became known as Gehenna. Christ made allusions to this former place of severe child abuse when he warned of a place of eternal torment now commonly known only as hell.
Can we afford to ignore the lives of our own offspring and resort to the perverting of justice whether in the acceptance of Roe v. Wade or the subverting of justice for child rapists? Are we willing to gamble the future of this great nation against the idea that we can? God help us to see that this is a fool's gamble because even to win would be losing.
© Michael Bresciani
October 11, 2009
Is leftism rising to the defense of evil even as it sinks to the depths of hell? Perhaps this question would have made a better title for this article but why scare readers away with what may only be construed as preachers pious platitudes.
America is busy with economic problems, the war in Afghanistan and healthcare issues, whose got time for questions of morality or theological issues? Apparently no one! While all the current issues are worthy of our attention isn't it odd that we tend to dismiss the very issue that we ultimately ignore at the price of our own peril?
The CBS News Crimesider reported on October 5, 2009 that Roman Polanski the accused child rapist agreed to pay to make it go away. "15 years after he fled the United States, film director — and child rapist — Roman Polanski agreed to pay his sexual assault victim $500,000 to settle a lawsuit, according to court documents."
Whether offered by the accused or extracted by civil proceedings we may be getting all too accustomed to the idea that money is a good substitute for justice. We know what O.J. had to pay and the huge sums Michael Jackson coughed up are now public record but do we actually accept this as reasonable payment for behavior or crimes that the common man would be asked to pay for with his own skin?
Now it is not just money but the weight of celebrity that is being leveraged to get the courts to stop the usual slow grinding of the wheels of justice. Celebrities who have weighed in for Polanski are the same ones who would have little mercy if the accused were a protestant minister, a catholic priest or a conservative senator or congressmen. Hollywood and leftism go hand in hand as in 'how could they get away with what they have shown us lately from the land of filmdom if they weren't liberals?' Apples don't grow on the Sycamore.
All liberals don't agree with the few Hollywood celebs that have stood up for Polanski and as the backlash grows against those who have, it is not that all liberals speak for Hollywood but rather can we afford to forget that it is more often than not that Hollywood speaks for the liberals. Some liberals are chiming in against giving Polanski a pass but is it because they actually have a conscience or is it the close proximity of the 2010 elections? You decide.
So what is the 'issue we ignore at our own peril?' What is it that we tend to label as 'preachers pious platitudes?' In fact it is that reminder in both scripture and history that when a nation begins to disregard the precious life of its own offspring it is in the throws and last gasps of its very existence.
If 50 million abortions weren't enough, as if trafficking in children weren't enough, as if the disappearance of 50,000 children a year in America weren't enough, as if exposing kindergarteners to the aspects of the gay life weren't enough, will we now add the lessening of the punishment to child rapists to the pot? Have we crossed the line from just flirting with God's judgment to outright asking for it? According to scripture we have.
Prior to ancient Israel's final fall which resulted in their being banished to all of the nations to be endlessly persecuted and hated (Diaspora) they literally went in circles. They would start with complete adherence to God's laws and statutes and in time would submit to the religions, cultures and practices of the surrounding nations until they were chastised (usually by warfare, pestilence, diseases and captivity) when they had enough they, would cry out to God again. He would send those prophets, judges and rulers that would deliver them. But they would only start around again in the vicious cycle.
Some things appeared in their national behavior each and every time they fell to the low end of the cycle. They always succumbed to the same sins but somehow managed to forget their past as a generation or two passed into history. The acceptance of sodomy, idolatry, licentiousness and child abuse were always at the heart of their fall.
Their child abuse went as far as it could go when coupled with aligning themselves to the idolatries of the surrounding nations. They sunk so far as to offer their children to be burned in the fires lit to honor the ancient idols of the god Moloch. While they sought the favor of idols made of wood and stone, the living God who bore them from the womb grew disgusted.
"Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem: but he did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord, like David his father: For he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, and made also molten images for Baalim. Moreover he burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel. (2 Chr 28: 1-3)
The King Ahaz did it and the people joined him in the burning of their own children. But Israel still managed to do it again until they were finally kicked out of their homeland for a period of nearly 2,500 years and would not become a free and independent nation again until 1948.
Among the many sins of mankind child abuse stands in a class by itself. In the scriptures it marks the final phase of a rift between God and any particular nation. Is America approaching this critical point with its abortions, child abductions and abuse and the coddling of child rapists?
We can discuss the stimulus package and the healthcare bill until we are unable to speak but to ignore these warnings of scripture will surely be our worst nightmare. This is my pious platitude of which I am not the least bit ashamed.
Pondering the use of 'Is leftism rising to the defense of evil even as it sinks to the depths of hell' as the alternate title for this piece takes on a whole new meaning when it is known that the very place where the Israelites offered their children to be burned was later referred to as hell by Jesus Christ. In fact it is the term used to this day.
The place where the children were offered, a vast open area to the south of Jerusalem where refuse was dumped and where fires and worms were always festering became known as Gehenna. Christ made allusions to this former place of severe child abuse when he warned of a place of eternal torment now commonly known only as hell.
Can we afford to ignore the lives of our own offspring and resort to the perverting of justice whether in the acceptance of Roe v. Wade or the subverting of justice for child rapists? Are we willing to gamble the future of this great nation against the idea that we can? God help us to see that this is a fool's gamble because even to win would be losing.
© Michael Bresciani
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