There appears to be an unstoppable trend observed in society and throughout the world and they generally have an effect on individual liberty and freedom. What resists such movement in the world? How effective is resistance to that change? Does a moral compass and leadership matter?
An obstacle to correct the woes of society is pragmatism. I bet you didn’t think pragmatism was a dirty word. It is like the surrogate to actually taking responsibility and accepting the fight. I was called pragmatic before, but that was in the realm of functional intelligence when I used some makeshift tool in place of the proper one that wasn’t available. Sometimes, one doesn’t understand what the best tool is.
A pragmatist in the unintentionally self-destructive sense involves surrendering of absolute moral values. Succumbing to feelings, sympathy, empathy, compassion while sacrificing moral disciplines is easy to do if you choose to resort to self-righteousness or idolatry.
What would be the correct tool now or in any Age?
It’s ubiquitous and it is insidious. Getting herded socially into situations seen as not good but tolerable (i.e. the stark example of the Jews who were forcibly moved, but in stages by the diabolical schemes of the Nazis), or we may suffer in the long term what is the equivalent of a forced forfeiture of private assets and liberty through manipulative policies of the government – swayed by ruthless lobbying and corruption in the halls of power and bureaucracy. The moral here is, at some point, without a revival of the spiritual core that results in courage on an existential level, leading to counter movement on a massive level, you will be herded into into the intolerable without recourse.
It’s hard to wage war when your life is decadent as a norm. When one can put a variety of food on the table and live a reasonably comfortable life, while mesmerizing your mind into oblivion, ignoring the grace of God that provided such and environment, that is when the non-kinetic war fronts are so prolific. It’s hard for the common person to wage war, when most people are living their lives to support their families do not have the time to become a zealot for a cause or even their country.
I think it was Cato the Elder who is credited for the quote, “The average Roman only cares about the pebble in his shoe.”
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Moral Degeneracy
The truth rings that the motivation for much of what happens in the world is founded upon hatred, lies, coveting, lust, idolatry (the worship of everything under the sun), and the disruption of the family. Sound familiar? I just ran through what the Ten Commandments warns us about. Naturally there are euphemisms galore, because lying to the public is a mainstay in the world we live in.
Making things personal, because we have we need to mind our own hypocrisy, have you ever let these types of dark desires drive you? Not to disappoint you in a sarcastic way, we all have the capability of becoming weak in our resolve to rise above our brain stem mentality, the fight or flight reaction, or worse, the ability to act as we flee from of anything that demands moral backbone.
Maybe people don’t start boneless, at least not being fully possessed by bonelessness, but without the antidote to these very powerful driving forces, we will, as a people and as a world society continue to experience this slippery slope, being constantly manipulated by those whose #1 priority remained firmly rooted in Sin.
“If you can’t beat them, join them.” That has been the pragmatic mode of operation for all who are unable to stand on principle, something that Sir Winston Churchill would not succumb to despite the enormous pressure to cut a deal with Herr Hitler. That attitude of “Let’s not fight it” or “Let it go” or “Let it be” sing to the predominate mode of the masses who choose not don’t “rock the boat don’t tip the boat over.”
We all have a conscience. It starts innocent, but parents tend to know that if you keep on reinforcing the incorrect behavior, ones attitude follows suit and you no longer have a model citizen with a desire to do good, but some form of depraved sociopathic monster. Once that new consciousness takes root in society, the freight train to hell just keeps rolling.
The enemy doesn’t rest. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. – EPHESIANS 6:12
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Do Not Underestimate The Enemy
Sorry to take more wind out of your sails, but the motive force for such depraved thinking is more than just a corruptible conscience. It’s not something that cannot be easily removed and its domain is the world.
The enemy is not something that you can possibly hope to even resist if you are not geared up for a wartime mentality. You have no way to overcome it, especially being stuck in a small pocket of resistance, even if you are surrounded by 100 acres out in someplace that is not California.
To oppose intruders with evil intent, you are not going to grab a BB gun, you would grab (and perhaps your whole family would be armed) the correct weapon to stop the hostile and not take risks. Again, the tool analogy.
For the field commander, you want overwhelming odds on your side if you had the choice, capable of destroying a resolute enemy on its home field, and every battle field commander would like to have an effective excess in his favor, because the consequences of failure are not acceptable.
What should be sobering, is this is how the enemy thinks. And what or who is on your side?
Yet, the sunshine patriot has relegated the moxy to fight to battles that are inconsequential. Their colors are without salt and they resist the enemy without effect. They are consumed with entertainment as their country and their culture still floats upon the glories of past victories of previous generations. I believe the category is called Milquetoast (yes, I had to look up that spelling for that).
Above it all, they are not in the right relationship to God from whom all blessings flow.
“Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all nations of the earth. 2 And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the Lord your God…” DEUTERONOMY 28:1-2
It only gets more obvious the smaller the world gets, the mentality is of those who would rule the world by removing liberty and freedom. We are all too familiar with the undercurrents, the shadows, of very powerful and influential forces with the resources to arm any significant subversive force from the heights of world government driving social and economic policies, down to the radicals on school boards in order to turn society and the family onto its head.
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What about The Resistance?
When I think of The Resistance, I think of the French and other European countries whose underground bands of guerrillas carried on a clandestine war against the occupying Nazis in WWII. They were outnumbered, but they fought because everything they loved was at stake of being lost. Many gave their lives for the cause and for the continued hopes that Allied forces would finally come en masse to force the occupying forces out.
I am not suggesting that people necessarily need to be in a kinetic state of mind, it is not possible to achieve victory only with that which we know in physical form; however, the mentality of a people threatened by an existential enemy, to fight that battle effectively, need to be under the allied banner of the idea or power who has the capabilities of carrying one to victory. It’s the invisible forces that drive loyalty, devotion and commitment, and hope.
One cannot expect victory and be caught up in a fight that is ever to be determined to be hopeless. The hope of the allied forces, much like in WWII, ultimately reside in the capability and the will to obliterate the entrenched enemy.
How can you take part in that fight if you are still living your life like your fight has passed.
This fight is ongoing.
If our fight is “…against spiritual hosts of wickedness” then you have to be in line with the Sovereign God of Creation whose Spirit resides in all who believe and trust completely in His Son Jesus Christ as Lord. It is the power of the Holy Spirit that the demons of this age and evil cannot overcome. The resistance that we see in the world is the result of the presence of the Holy Spirit in believers and those who will believe, without whom, the forces of evil would rapidly overcome the world.
It’s not only the spirit of truth and conviction of sin in those who consciously believe, but also of those who are on not yet called to Christ and are even now are human beings perceived to be among the enemies of God’s people.
As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So he arose and followed Him. – MATTHEW 9:9
Educate yourselves what is sin, if not you will dwell in it and you can easily succumb to it because you have not identified it within yourself. In ignorance, you’ve already become a functional cog of the enemy machine – that is how nastily subversive the enemy is.
Self-righteousness is a state that is utterly woeful when compared to the distant shadow of the tail edge of God’s holy and righteous glory.
“[Jesus] answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ ” – MATTHEW 4:4
CKY
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