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Why the Left Hates Christianity
. . . and the Judaism which gave rise to it.
The Catholic Church celebrates the feast of The Passion of St. John the Baptist today (August 29th). The Baptist is the last and greatest of the Old Testament prophets — the forerunner of the Messiah, who is Priest, Prophet, and King, and in whom the Old Testament prophecies are completely fulfilled. But, significant to this post, and like Jesus, John was a Jew. We Catholics commemorate on this day how John lost his head by proclaiming the Mosaic law to the tetrarch Herod Antipas regarding marriage. Namely, you shall not covet your neighbor’s (or your brother’s) wife (also Leviticus 20:21). If you’re unfamiliar with the story, you can read about it in the Gospel according to Mark, 6:17-29.
While John’s message was principally to repent and be washed in the waters of baptism — not judge other’s behavior to be sinful to prove your own worthiness — he still insisted on the moral demands of God’s covenant law, even for the rich and powerful. And this was the strike that came against him — right at the neck.
John Grondelski is another such truth-teller who takes on nominal Catholics in his article, When Did John Lose His Head? He says,
No doubt Antipas and his sycophants would have launched a campaign to convince Jews that they had it wrong, that “love is love” and “love wins,” even for the incestuous.
He insists that “the reality of marriage and the morality of sexual activity are objective norms which “norm” the individual. Norms measure the reality and the activity; it is not the individual, or even the community, that defines the reality and the morality.”
And he ends with,
What’s at stake today is more than two thousand years of received Christian tradition that says the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth was right in taking the civil tetrarch of Perea and Galilee to task for copulating with his brother’s wife. Either John was right in rejecting their divorces and subsequent cohabitation or John—and the Christian tradition that lionized him—was wrong for two millennia by being “hateful” toward Mr. and Mrs. Antipas. The unspoken corollary is that Christianity is at its core at least warped, if not hateful. And there’s no pardon in contemporary cancel culture—even for a Baptizer—who opposed “love” in the name of evidently mistaken religious norms.
But, I’ll take it a step further and say that when the sign of ultimate victory is Christ on the Cross, the threat to the Left isn’t just the insistence on reality (of marriage, and much else) and speaking truth. The threat leftists recognize from Christianity is that adherents are willing to die, like John, and especially like Jesus, for love of reality and truth. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. . .” Christians believe that authentic love is self-sacrificial for the good of the other, even if the other doesn’t appreciate hearing the truth.
The Left hates Christianity because the conflicting visions are about the ultimate, life and death power struggle for souls. And a people willing to die for the truth are ultimately, eternally indomitable. Even if they lose their heads in the process.
Published in General
Those jerks!
Genesis 1 through 3 and Exodus 20 are reason enough for the people who tend to hate us both.
Doesn’t Paul instruct that very thing?
If they say them as doctrine, it does mean that.
(If.)
Jesus says the Holy Spirit can help the apostles do greater deeds than his, right? Was that only for the Apostles? Should we assume those greater deeds are more spectacular miracles, and not, for example, the very acts of love you are recommending?
As for the mountain, did he not say “this mountain”? What does it mean for Mount Zion to be uprooted and planted in the sea? Is that not a figure for something?
On the use of miracles in evangelism (and the current lack of them):
I have never been a cessationist in terms of miracles ending with the apostles. However, in listening to the Council of Trent YT on the so-called “Dark Passages”, one of his arguments was that God doesn’t change but we do. That tension trying to pull us into alignment like a suspension bridge, the stoning of adulterers was for a people overly tolerant of sin that did not recognize the severity of the sin while the later grace shown to the adulterer was for a people that had become harsh and legalistic, lacking in grace and mercy.
Perhaps miracles of healing and tongues not being around today are because of who we are as a people today. Miracles are not likely to convince us of anything, so jaded are we that it would be fabricated or the result of medical intervention. We are not a people receptive to it, though I’m always up for being proven wrong on this sort of thing :)
I never heard of a cessationist who was. Cessationism is a different position than that.
So hard to talk on a phone! One needs a keyboard.
But there is an intro to this topic on Ricochet. I wrote it myself. Maybe I’ll give a link later from the office desktop.
Paul speaks inflammatory things, too. Imagine standing on a corner and reading Romans 1-2 out loud.
Speak the truth in love – the ultimate question and one I love the KJV for its concept of “love” as charity… the love is patient service. The truth is “is the man you currently live with your husband?”
Sure, they could be those. And those acts of love will be radically different from the surrounding secular world, just as the physical miracles are radically different from ordinary experience.
It could be a figure. It could also be meant both literally and figuratively. Those meanings are not in competition with each other.
Amen.
Well said!!!!
Yes, I am a Catholic. Notice that Paul gave instructions to Timothy and Titus, as one who had authority. Where did that authority come from? It came from Christ himself. Paul’s Epistles recount his leadership of the communities he started, correcting them with authority when necessary. The New Testament is not the story of people going off on their own authority to proclaim the Gospel according to their personal interpretation of it.
Paul uses the model of the body for the Church. Just as the body has different organs with different functions, the eyes, the ears, the arms, etc., so the Church is an organism the members of which have different functions. Are all Apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? (1. Cor. 12:29). No, they are not. So just because an Apostle does something, it doesn’t mean we should.
I actually do agree with you that the Church has been far too accommodating lately, since Vatican II. I wish she would robustly proclaim the Gospel – which Catholics have traditionally interpreted as meaning that the Sacraments are normally necessary to salvation, leaving Protestants as well as Jews in a very precarious situation. But I’m not going to run around proclaiming it myself, even if I believe it, because I have no authority to do so and my personal interpretation of the Gospels has no more claim to the truth than anyone else’s. I’m sure you disagree with it, and we could spend the rest of the evening condemning each other, but what would that prove?
Mark, I don’t think that you’re correct about either of these points.
Is there some problem with identifying some people as the enemies of God?
We have enemies. Jesus told us to “love your enemies,” which implies that the category of enemies is not an empty set. In Matthew 10, Jesus said:
So there are enemies. It seems clear to me that the enemies are those who reject Jesus.
I agree that everyone is a sinner. There are sinners who reject Jesus, and are the enemies of God. There are sinners who put their faith in Jesus, and are forgiven, and become children of God. I can cite the verses about this if you like.
On your second point, I don’t think that the problem is insufficient religiosity. Jesus said that the problem with people who reject Him is that they love darkness instead of light, because their deeds are evil. He also said that the Jewish leaders’ problem was that they were not children of Abraham, but children of the Devil.
I think that the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, in John 4, makes it clear that religious knowledge is not the issue. Jesus explains that the Samaritans are clueless — “you worship what you do not know” — while the Jews “worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.” He proceeds to say: “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.” After this, many Samaritans put their faith in Jesus, clueless as they were. Some Jews did as well, like the Apostles, while many Jews did not. The degree of knowledge of the Jewish Scriptures doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it.
Would you be specific?
There’s something in Romans 12 about blessing those who persecute you, not repaying evil for evil, feeding a hungry enemy, and giving a drink to a thirsty enemy, “for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” This particular verse doesn’t describe ongoing service as a way of winning believers.
You may have something else in mind.
It’s just an example of the general pattern of winning them through love.
But for examples of that specific example, see his instructions to wives and bondservants.
Ok. I got you wrong I guess.
I am not a Christian, (and by your definition-your enemy), so you may take this with a grain of salt.
It seems that you feel compelled to put out the blunt truth of the Gospel to unbelievers, as you are directed to do so by the Bible, but you don’t seem to be concerned whether it works or not to convert them to Christianity. Isn’t the whole point to gain more believers, not just to repeat threatening dogma to people?
Also, you seem to show little or no compassion for unbeliever’s fate in this world or the next. Perhaps others can sense this when you are trying to spread the Gospel, and it turns them off? As you quoted in a later comment, Jesus commanded you to “love your enemies.”
We don’t save people. God does. We can plant seeds, but that’s about all that is in our power.
But you are the instruments, no? Doesn’t that place some responsibility on you as a Christian?
It places the burden on us to share and treat others in love. It does not burden us with how the truth is received.
As long as I speak the truth, however offensive it is, with conviction and maybe gentleness, it is not on me if someone is offended. It is not on me if they don’t change their minds. It isn’t my job to convince them. And it does take all kinds, here. I think there is a need for the brimstone prophet AND for the gentle servant. Both are necessary.
I feel like it would be quicker if Jerry made a list of people he actually likes.
Here is way it works. 1 Corinthians 3:5-8. The fruit of pointing to Jesus, through the Gospel is not ours to produce, but the Holy Spirit’s.
What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth. Now the one who plants and the one who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor.
😂😂😂