In California Schools Kids Can't Pray To Jesus, But They Must Pray to Tezkatlipoka

California recently approved a new Ethnic Studies curriculum that will have their impressionable lumps of clay (students) praying to bloodthirsty ancient Mesoamerican gods. Per CBN, 

"...the curriculum claims white Christians committed "theocide" against America's native tribes, killing their gods and replacing them with Christianity.  And as a response to this crime, the new woke program recommends students should chant to the Aztec deity of human sacrifice. 

City Journal reports the new Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum program would be expanded to include all primary and secondary schools in the Golden State, which serve a total of 6 million students. 

"Students first clap and chant to the god Tezkatlipoka—whom the Aztecs traditionally worshipped with human sacrifice and cannibalism—asking him for the power to be 'warriors' for 'social justice.'

Fox News adds,

A portion read, "pulsating creation huitzilopochtli cause like sunlight, the light inside of us, in will to action’s what brings... Xipe Totek, Xipe Totek, x2 transformation, liberation, education, emancipation. imagination revitalization, liberation, transformation, decolonization, liberation, education, emancipation, changin’ our situation in this human transformation."

Back to the CBN report,

Next, the students chant to the gods Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli, and Xipe Totek, seeking 'healing epistemologies' and 'a revolutionary spirit.' Huitzilopochtli, in particular, is the Aztec deity of war and inspired hundreds of thousands of human sacrifices during Aztec rule. Finally, the chant comes to a climax with a request for 'liberation, transformation, and decolonization,' after which students shout 'Panche beh! Panche beh!' in pursuit of ultimate 'critical consciousness."

Fox News adds, 

Another chant used the term "Hunab Ku," or "One-God," which Encyclopedia Brittanica identified as a Mayan deity. That portion of the chant read: "we’re here to transform the world we’re spiraling, rotating & revolving in, giving thanks daily, tlazokamati, giving thanks daily, tlazokamati, healing & transforming as we’re evolving in this universe, universe, of Hunab Ku, Hunab Ku, x2 Nahui OlIin Lak Ech - Panche Beh, Ethnic Studies For All, Represent!!"

With the huge numbers of Central Americans already in California and with more to come, are the ancient religions being brought back to cater to the new arrivals? 

I thought public schools were not allowed to force religion into empty minds.

I can only pray that parents fight this by going to the courts, and by raising their children to put their faith in Jesus who brings life and not Tezkatlipoka, Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli, Hunab Ku, and Xipe Totek who bring death.

 

About Whom The Story Is Told

 The reading for Palm Sunday is John 12:2-16 in which Lazarus makes a second appearance, Jesus' feet are anointed, Judas gets upset, and Jesus rides into Jerusalem,

There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.

The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting,

‘Hosanna!

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—

   the King of Israel!’

Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written:

‘Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion.

Look, your king is coming,

   sitting on a donkey’s colt!’

His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him.

We don't know if Lazarus was ever put to death, but the story is not about him. Hopefully he escaped to die a second time and to be with Jesus, who the story is about, again.

 

Poly, Poly, Legalize Me

Polyamory (unofficial polygamy) is slowly spreading. I reported in July 2020 how the city of Somerville, Massachusetts, had broadened its definition of domestic partnership to give polyamorous relationships the same rights as a married couple. Recently the neighboring city of Cambridge, home to Harvard University, has done likewise.

From the Christian Post, 

"Last week, the Cambridge City Council approved an ordinance amending the city’s existing statute so that domestic partnerships are not limited to only two people...

A domestic partnership in the city that is home to Harvard University is now defined as 'the entity formed by two or more persons' who are not related and 'consider themselves to be a family.' They must file a registration stating that they are 'in a relationship of mutual support, caring and commitment and intend to remain in such a relationship.'

The revised policy removes the requirement that everyone in the partnership must live together and also scraps a section that makes domestic partners submit proof of their familial relationship to the city."

Who is behind this movement?

There is an entity called the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition (PLAC) that is providing legal advice to those wanting to legalize polyamory/polygamy. Their webpage claims to have assisted in drawing up the ordinance for Cambridge,

"The ordinance was developed with detailed input from the newly formed Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition (PLAC), and is the first of what advocates hope will be a wave of legal recognition for polyamorous families and relationships in 2021..." 

"PLAC has drafted sample legislation to assist cities in establishing their own multi-partner domestic partnership ordinances, as well as non-discrimination ordinances to protect polyamorous families and individuals."

They then make an extraordinary claim, 

"An estimated 11% of people in the United States have engaged in a polyamorous relationship at some point during their life..."

 Who are their allies?

"To support this momentum, the Chosen Family Law Center and Harvard Law School LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic teamed up with other mental health professionals and lawyers to create PLAC. PLAC, whose mission is supported by the American Psychological Association’s Division 44 Committee on Consensual Non-Monogamy..."

 A quick "swing" over to the American Psychological (or should that be psycho-logical?) Association page shows this, 

"The Task Force on Consensual Non-Monogamy promotes awareness and inclusivity about consensual non-monogamy and diverse expressions of intimate relationships. These include but are not limited to: people who practice polyamory, open relationships, swinging, relationship anarchy and other types of ethical, non-monogamous relationships." 

Going back to the PLAC page one look at "Our Team" gives you an idea of what the towns around Boston are up against. Take Mx. Kimberly M. Rhoten whose preferred pronoun is "They". They are,

"a founding member of PLAC and is a lawyer, advocate, and researcher. They received their B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and their Juris Doctorate from The University of Chicago Law School."

Berkley goes to Boston, no surprise there. PLAC should have used "are" instead of "is" in their description of "them".

And then we have Heron Greenesmith who also is described as "they",

"..a founding member of PLAC and a progressive policy attorney & advocate who specializes in providing support for bisexual and pansexual communities. From the White House to conferences across the country, Heron speaks and writes about the disparities facing LGBTQ people and how to remedy them through policy advocacy."

And poor Alexander Chen, Esq. whose preferred pronoun is "he",

"Alexander Chen is a founding member of PLAC and the Founding Director of the Harvard Law School LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic. Alexander’s work focuses on expanding the rights of LGBTQ+ people. He also teaches Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, and the Law at the Law School."

"He" must feel like the odd man out in that crowded PLAC office.   

So WWJS? 

He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” -Matthew 19:5-6

I say that Jesus got it right and the PLAC, APA, Cambridge, and Somerville got it wrong. 

We predicted this would happen once same-sex marriage became the law of the land. 

The farther we as a nation walk apart from Jesus, the farther down the road to Gomorrah we go.

What could possibly go wrong?

 

John 12:20-33

This Sunday's Gospel reading is from John 12:20-33 in which we hear of Greeks seeking Jesus and more of Jesus' talk about his coming into glory.

Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.

 ‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’ The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to him.’ Jesus answered, ‘This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

On this Sunday late in Lent, we are reminded of the horror of the Passion of Jesus, and of the ensuing fruit of which we are a part.

As to what became of the Greeks, we are left to speculate

 

 

Do Religious Beliefs Evolve Over Time?

 In a recent NPR article, "Some Faith Leaders Call Equality Act Devastating; For Others, It's God's Will", reporter Tom Gjelten makes the following assertion, 

"... one lesson of history is that religious beliefs evolve in response to changing cultural attitudes. The transformation, in part, reflects altered interpretations of scripture and tradition. Theological discussions around issues of marriage and sexuality reflect this trend."

I don't know which history book he has been reading, but it doesn't sound like the Bible. 

He then quotes Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson to get some Biblical support for the idea that religious beliefs evolve in response to culture,

"Retired Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church, likes to quote a story from the biblical account of the Last Supper.

In Robinson's telling, Jesus says to his disciples, 'There is much that I would teach you, but you cannot bear it right now. So I will send the Holy Spirit, who will lead you into all truth.' And the question I always ask my brothers and sisters in the conservative denominations, Robinson says, is, 'Could it be that God is leading us into a deeper truth about gay and lesbian, bisexual, transgender people?' "

While he is an expert in leading the church to follow the culture, Bishop Robinson ignores the alternate possibility that a different spirit might be leading us, and leading us astray. 

Having quoted such an esteemed authority, Gjelten doubles down on his claim,

"Given that religious beliefs do change over time, that evolution may be more important than new legislation for the promotion of LGBTQ rights."

Gjelten did not ask anyone to offer a counter argument to his assertion, so I will open the comment section for others to point out problems with the "Religious Beliefs Evolve Hypothesis" from a Christian perspective.

I have one brief observation. We have the Gospels and the Creeds, and these have not evolved over the centuries. Different interpretations come and go, but the core beliefs that Jesus is Lord, that he died for our sins, and that all who believe in Him will have eternal life do not evolve. Our many sins are also detailed in the Bible, and that has not changed. Those sins do not evolve into blessings as the Vatican recently pointed out. Such a change would, in evolutionary terms, be considered a lethal mutation, or as I see it, the devolution of belief. 

Certain novel beliefs are, like Bishop Robinson, evolutionary dead ends.

John 3:16, As Offensive Today as Then?

 This Sunday, congregations following the Revised Common Lectionary will her the words of John 3:14-21 (ACNA churches read John 6:1-15 about the feeding of the five thousand). Just imagine how you might feel if you were a devout first century Jew or polytheist as you listened to these words,

And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’

 We hear Jesus with our post resurrection ears. We are not offended at all. In fact, we are uplifted, but there are billions of Muslims who take offence at Jesus' statement. There are millions of Jews who, while not offended, might scoff at these verses. There are many who call themselves Christian that believe that Jesus is "a way" and not "the way", and this includes priests and bishops of certain denominations. I have even heard (from the pulpit) that Jesus did not mean eternal life as we commonly interpret it  to mean. Instead, this one priest claimed, Jesus meant that we were to have a fuller Earthly life, which of course we will have, but I maintain that eternal life goes along with that, something that priest would deny. 

I believe that these words of Jesus are so offensive to today's "woke" culture that he would be banned from speaking on college campuses, ridiculed and shunned by the media, labelled a spreader of hate speech, taken to jail in some countries, and put to death in others.

Have we really changed in the past 2000 years?

When Nothing is Sacred

 In his article, The Suicide of a Civilization, Anthony Esolen paints a grim and depressing picture of what qualities a civilization intent on destroying itself might have. Depressing because these qualities are present in modern Western Civilization. 

"Such a culture would be more preoccupied with death than with life; and this preoccupation might be manifest in a variety of ways. It would promote a right to die on your own terms, but no right to live, rather only a permission to live, provided that you possess certain qualities that people acknowledge as useful or as ushering you into the fold; and what these qualities are and how they shall be recognized will shift with political exigencies and sentiments. Life is no gift, but a mere thing, to be disposed of at will, like garbage. Nothing is sacred—not the body, not the soul, no place, no object, no name, no human persons, no history, no songs, no God."

I think the only sacred thing today is the spirit of the age, and we do not dare going against the zeitgeist, especially the most sacred cow to some, abortion, and the newest idol, transgenderism.

"...They who would crush, dismember, or fry in salt that astonishingly beautiful child in the womb surely will not scruple to invade the haven of a child’s blessed innocence, during the time when his sexual desires are dormant or latent, that long time that boys and girls need to learn who they are and what they are, destined to grow up to be confident husbands and fathers, wives and mothers. Jesus has hard words to say about those who would offend against the little ones, but, since nothing is sacred, the people of a dying culture will be eager to have children join them in corruption and meaningless hedonism, festooned as always with euphemism, like lipstick and false hair on a skull. A horrid drag queen instructing little boys on how to tuck their testicles into their bodies and bind them there—death, boasting of death."

I find the "Drag Queen Story Hour" a perfect example of a culture that is slashing its wrists.

..."The people of a dying culture not only smother their future in the womb. They murder their ancestors too. They look with envy upon the great men of their past, men who, like all men, were imperfect, but who built, and built not just for themselves but for their posterity. They sneer at those great men and enjoy 'debunking' their legends. Nothing is sacred. " 

I think that there will always be something that people hold sacred for which they will create sacraments.

Cancelling history is the new sacrament.

Our sacred history related in the Gospels is in danger of being cancelled as Scotland's hate crime bill threatens to do.

Save us Lord Jesus.

 

 

 

Turning the Tables...Over

 In this Sunday's reading from John 2:13-22, Jesus violently cleanses the Temple.

"The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken."

We know what happened to Jesus after his rampage. You can only imagine the consequences to anyone who did something like this to those occupying our modern temples of government. A person who chased out those busy trading money for political favors, exchanging the lives of the unborn for political gain.

Oh wait, no need to imagine...

 

The Cancel Culture's Religion: Progressivism

Coopting words for political gain is an art. "Progressives" have done this so well with their label. Positive emotions are elicited by the word, "progressive", and negative feelings go to anyone opposed to anything "progressive". Science shows us that most human decisions are initially influenced by emotions before the logic centers in the brain have a chance to examine a problem, so we may not be able to do much in our efforts to turn people around.

Two years ago in John Gray's post at Unherd, "Liberalism: the other God that failed: Will the post-liberal West suffer the same fate as communism?", I think we can see the root causes of what we today call the "Cancel Culture" and its progressive trajectory,  

"In this alt-liberal ideology, the central values of classical liberalism — personal autonomy and the rejection of tradition in favour of critical reason — are radicalised and turned against the liberal way of life. A heretical cult, alt-liberalism is what liberalism becomes when it tears up its roots in Jewish and Christian religion. Today it is the ruling ideology in much of the academy and media..."

When you try to create your own god, things typically do not go well.

"...alt-liberals appear wholly sincere when they denounce the society that privileges and rewards them. Unlike the Marranos, whose public professions concealed another view of the world, alt-liberals conceal nothing. There is nothing in them to conceal. They are expressing the prevailing western orthodoxy, which identifies western civilization as being uniquely malignant."

It is amazing how, in our country where we are well fed (obesity is endemic) and the poor are richer than most of the world's peoples, the alt-liberals still claim that large numbers of people are starving and poverty stricken.

"Of course, civilizational self-hatred is a singularly western conceit. Non-western countries — China, India and Russia, for example— are increasingly asserting themselves as civilization-states. It is only western countries that denounce the civilization they once represented. But not everything is as it seems. Even as they condemn it, alt-liberals are affirming the superiority of the West over other civilizations. Not only is the West uniquely destructive. It is only the West — or its most advanced section, the alt-liberal elite — that has the critical capacity to transcend itself. But to become what, exactly? Lying behind these intellectual contortions is an insoluble problem."

In other words, our founding fathers were a bunch of white, slave owning, Christian men who created an evil nation to propagate their racist ideology, and only our enlightened modern eyes can see this and only our superior minds can erase that history. But what will replace our representative republic once we have rejected God and country? 

"In his essay in 'The God that Failed' Gide wrote: “My faith in communism is like my faith in religion. It is a promise of salvation for mankind.” Here Gide acknowledged that communism was an atheist version of monotheism. But so is liberalism, and when Gide and others gave up faith in communism to become liberals, they were not renouncing the concepts and values that both ideologies had inherited from western religion. They continued to believe that history was a directional process in which humankind was advancing towards universal freedom."

Now the religion of Cancel Culture will advance humankind and replace our history and our Republic in order to build up a new and better world. "Cancelling" is sounds eerily like the theory of Permanent Revolution of communist Leon Trotsky. How can cancelling ever end once it has become a faith?

How is far has humankind advanced?

We are more efficient at killing one another.

We are more efficient in communicating hatred and sowing division.

Falsehoods spread like wildfire.

We can generate a mob in no time.

The list goes on and on... 

Not all progress is good.

Not all progress moves forward. 

The society that moves away from God progresses to its own doom.