Why should the devil have all the good P.R. tactics?

I'm imagining Margaret Sanger on stage, donning a gag and standing stoically beside a man delivering her written speech to the crowd, in defiance of the arrest threat from the city of Boston.

The scene is an icon of the noble struggle against oppressive patriarchy.  It resonated perfectly with the inner sense of suppression that American young adults in the late 1920's were born into and against which they were ostentatiously rebelling.  It helped that Sanger, herself, was an outspoken member of that same segment and subculture, so the gesture was natural for her.  She didn't come up against the overarching problem in today's Western PR enterprise, namely, the reality that all public communication is intercultural.

And, as ever, the medium is the message.

As far as the public imagination is concerned, it didn't matter then, and it doesn't matter now whether or not the content of her message was rational, grounded, edifying, wise, loving, or good in any way.  It didn't matter then in seed form, and it doesn't matter now in its maturity, that the message would be integral to the development of the now culturally engrained worldview that allowed, propelled, and sustains the worst massacre in human history.

The devil gets this stuff.  A gifted musician, he weaves themes and knits phrases which later build and swell into an avalanche of emotion.  His timing is impeccable, his messaging is sweet and palatable.  And he leaves you wanting more. So much so, that after the first movement, he hardly has to do anything to encourage the growth of his insidious seed.  We humans take that ball and run with it to absurd ends, convinced that, somewhere along the way, we'll actually find more Turkish Delight.

[Ya, I know.  Too many metaphors.  But it's hard enough for me to find time to blog at all, let alone to go back and finesse and ....like.....EDIT.  So lay off.]

Anyway, without constructing an adequate argument, I am just sharing my thought on the matter.  I see so many PR debacles in the Christian world.  The good stuff gets buried or maligned by the world's (read satan's) super-oiled PR machine.  I'm not talking about Qura'n burnings.  That didn't have to get perverted and spun to be stupid.  Like Lady Gaga, it was born that way.  I'm talking about when good people actually follow the Holy Spirit and do the work to which God calls them.  When the Church exercises Her prophetic role in this dark world, and does so in faith, hope, and love, but gets dog-piled by the media and the propaganda machine.  Great PR is so much less vulnerable to those attacks, but great PR, we don't have.  We just don't.  The best Christian PR people work for those few (and largely useless) rich "christian" organizations who can afford them.

Because we're under attack ALL THE TIME, our prophetic voice calling out the infallible Truth that the world ignores out of active ignorance or passive deception too often ends up sounding like Jean-Luc Picard insisting despite tremendous torture and coercion  that "there.....are.....four......lights!".  He doesn't (and we don't) have the resources to muster up a better delivery than the salient Truth, prudentially and sparingly spoken.

And, as ever, the Medium is the Message.

God, help us.  And ask Gabriel to chip in, too.  Thanks.  Amen.

Really deserves it's own follow-up post: Clever turns of phrase by the Culture of Death

So remember how I just wrote about this article, like, 5 minutes ago?
Well I forgot to mention the other really maddening part about it.

The culture of death LOVES fancy words. They quite enjoy clever turns of phrase. And they REALLY love euphemisms.

For example, the culture of death often calls itself "Pro-Choice". That sounds nice, doesn't it?
The wholesale slaughter of innocent babies is called "reproductive health care".
When it's particularly focused on girls, it's called "gender selection".
But when the movement wants to highlight an anti-feminist application of abortion in the developing world (that is, when a woman chooses something THEY wouldn't choose), they give it a nasty name like "gender based foetuscide".
When it involves arbitrarily halving the population of a womb for convenience's sake, it's called "twin reduction".
When we determine that Granny needs to be put down like a stray mutt, it gets subsumed into the otherwise charitable category of "end of life care".

The linked article made me aware of a new term they are using (though I am not sure if it's just new to me or if it's really new).

To wit:

When you DO want to euthanize Granny as if she were an injured mule, but you don't own a barn or a shotgun and you can't bear the thought of knowing the exact moment of her death (in other words, when you're murderous, selfish, AND anemic), you have a new option.  You can give Granny a cocktail of drugs to keep her really really quiet.  Even deader than sleep, but not quite dead (you gotta say that like that weird wizard played by Mel Brooks in The Princess Bride).  Then you just stop feeding her.  Eventually, at some unpredictable point in time, she either starves to death or her weak heart just fails because of the extreme sedation.  And the beauty of it is, you don't know what actually killed her (the poison or the starvation), so there's very little blame to go around, and very few guilty feelings.  She'll probably die alone and in her "sleep", so it's a simulation of that scenario when your sick Granny just slips away peacefully one night and you get a phone call from the nursing home.  It's almost touching in it's simplicity and similarity to a natural passing-on. 

We call it "palliative sedation". 

Now, isn't that special?  So...so...palatable!

These people have SUCH a way with words!

How exactly do you become an expert on death?

At first, I thought this article was news.

I only read the last few words of the headline : "...legalization of assisted suicide". I read on, skimming only, thinking that some special case had emerged and raised the issue. Perhaps some compelling or sentimental story was unfolding, one in which some dying person was being victimized by their own existence in a previously unforeseeable way.

But, after 5-8 seconds, I saw no case, and was confused.

I went back and read the headline.

...

Ohhhhhhh, I get it. It's a panel of EXPERTS.

Silly me. Here I thought that the postmodernist relativistic machine had cooked up a fresh way to present sensible reality as a basis for deconstructing the natural law. I mean, we all know that we can only know morality existentially, right? The new modernism would have us believe that, as human experience grows, and as more and more possible scenarios are dealt with by increasingly aware and compassionate human beings, morality will be more and more sharpened like a pencil (which eventually disappears). Objective knowledge and authority are discounted in this enterprise as vestiges of oppressive medieval classism. Or worse, it smacks of religion.

How heartened I was to see that assisted suicide was being promoted, not by sentimentalism or the evolution of morality, but by a panel of experts.

WHEW!

Yaknow, good thing. I mean, I would have started to think that the media had gone on some militaristic campaign to undermine the sanctity of life. I would have been writing about the evils of media activism, or maybe about the lamentable state of a society that rejects the wisdom of the ages because they can't learn from history. Maybe I would have rolled my eyes at the arrogance required to believe that right and wrong are defined by poll results and the shifting winds of public opinion.

But they consulted the EXPERTS. Thank goodness.

See, Christians? We are vindicated. The majority does NOT get to determine morality. Authority is NOT rejected. The EXPERTS are in charge.

Truth isn't unified, is it?
Truth doesn't find it's mysterious origin and telos in God, does it?
The experts aren't experts because they can reliably be said to be aligned with divine revelation. NOOO! That's silliness. They're not experts because they're RIGHT. They're right because they're EXPERTS.

Twin Reduction

We have such clinical names for evil these days. "Reproductive Health" is one that sends shivers up my spine. "Gender-based foetuscide" is another. And today, I came across another I hadn't heard before. "Twin Reduction".

What utter disgusting horror.
What stark and unabashed evil.
It's nothing short of the demonic forces of hell at their insidious deceptive work.

I know - it sounds like a mechanical function or a financial procedure.

Nope.

It's actually random murder.

It's closer to Hitler's "Final Solution".
You go into a woman's womb, indiscriminately wipe out half it's population, and leave the other half traumatized for life.

Read here if you have the stomach.

Help me out, here

Facebook removed my second-last post, and warned me because it was, in their automated message's language, either "offensive, threatening, or hateful, among other things".

Among other things? So which was it? Horribly rude, or just filled with too many spelling errors?

Apparently, my account could be terminated or my access to certain features restricted if I persist in.....um....whatever it was that got this post flagged. So, what, either tone down the genocidal rhetoric, or use spell check? Or take a writing class?

Because there is no way to contact Facebook to inquire about this, I won't be able:

1) to submit a clarification or an appeal,

2) to find out if someone reported the post to initiate its removal, or to discover who it was,

3) to discern exactly what triggered the removal, or

4) to adapt so as to avoid further censure.

I suppose that, given that the word "k*ll" appears in the title of the post, it could have been flagged by a search bot, but that doesn't quite line up: I am sure there are hundreds of posts urging people to "k*ll Bill C-###" or simply reporting on how some warring group k*illed members of their opposing group. Neither of those examples incites violence, except in the most ivory of ivory towers where latte-sipping "professional victims" plot how to suppress free speech across the world. [I decided not to go further on that very enjoyable rant, for the sake of preserving the point.]

No, all signs point to someone flagging the post as offensive. But what I learned on Facebook's FAQ page is that a real person at Facebook actually verifies every complaint. So at least two real people substantiated my offensiveness (or at least my lack of a grade school education).

JUST FOR THE RECORD,

1) I quite like my actual next-door neighbors.

2) Even if I did not, I would wish them no harm.

3) I have never and will never perpetrate the kind of violence that I metaphorically refer to in my post (either the analogous kind I talk about nor the actual kind I am really getting at in the post).

4) I was employing the classical rhetorical technique of the "absurd analogy". Obviously, I was relating the crime of murder and it's absurd justification in my fictitious situation to abortion. I don't know how this wasn't clear.

5) Abortion is murder.

I would love to hear feedback on this. Why is my post so offensive? It still lives on my blog. See the link above.

Thanks, all.

God bless.

Why I Love Jesus +a few +meme

It's not like I don't have anything to blog about, Gregory.

I just don't usually have time. Least of all for these kinds of digital chain-letter deals. But this one was pure and simple, and a few people I respect are into it, so here goes.

One further caveat: I do not hesitate to talk about how much I personally love Jesus, but two things generally keep me from doing so in a venue such as this one:
1) I don't love Him very well, and it's embarrassing.
2) Words don't speak as loudly as sacrifice.

But anywazzzz, here goes...

5 REASONS I LOVE JESUS:

1) I love Jesus because He is everything good about everything.
The Scriptures bear me out on this, albeit in fancier words.
Everything I desire in my heart, everything that I ache to possess or to experience, even if that desire is expressed in sinful ways, is rooted in something fundamentally good, true, and genuinely sweet. And all of it is found in the Person of Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God. He is the fulfilment of every human desire and longing, and the very essence of life itself. This is the purest, most sublime, and most absolute Truth I am capable of knowing.
This truth is foundational to just about everything else. To avoid risking a unidirectional perspective on this concept, I will leave it as is.

2) I love Jesus because He first loved me.
I know I stole this from Gregory (actually from the Apostle John), but as I read the title of both Gregory's and Owen's posts, it was one of two answers that popped to my mind instantly (the first one being #1 above).
My take on this is not primarily that I am simply grateful for His love and therefore consciously decide to love Him back in some evolutionary self-preservation sort of way. I am eternally grateful to Him for His love, but that's not why I love Him in the sense that I wouldn't choose to love Him if He didn't give me what I want or need. Rather, the sense in which I love Jesus because He first loved me is that without His love, I would not exist to love Him, nor have the inherent created purpose of loving Him, nor understand love at all, nor be free to love Him or anyone, nor have access to the never-ending Source of love that is Him (which would lead to a Dead Sea effect), nor in any other way have any capacity to love whatsoever. Born out of this loved-in capacity, I also happen to be grateful and to feel great affection for Jesus, but that's a vapour droplet compared to the mighty rushing river of love that I am still learning to ride in Jesus. I get tingles just thinking about Him, though. Ya, I was Pentecostal. Sue me.

3) I love Jesus because He is the only object worth loving.
This is, of course, connected to #1 above (as is everything else). But the angle I wish to highlight here is that my love, when I am functioning well, is not so much fragmented between different objects, but rather is consolidated in Jesus, Who is present in every person to some degree, and in every object worth loving. Jesus is all good and worthy of all of my love. I don't love my neighbour apart from that which he derives from Jesus, or else my love is selfish.

4) I love Jesus because He is there.
Jesus is not just an abstraction. He is not just the noumenal object of my love or it's ethereal source. He is present and available to me. Had He asked me to love Him only virtually, I would settle either into an unfulfilling nominal affection born of duty, or I would eventually dry up and not really experience any love at all, and I would be lifeless and...like....Southern Baptist or something. No, I don't just have an idea of love or of Jesus; I have things to latch onto that are good, and that I can love, and through which I can actually FEEL love. This is God's mercy and Divine Pedagogy. The symbols, handles, labels, structures, bodies, and touchpoints of Jesus are not mere abstractions, but are really and truly infused with HIM, with His very essence and substance. Most of all, they are gifts of self from Him to me. He is there in the Church, in the Scriptures, in the Sacraments, in the Liturgy, and in people (especially the poor). His love is felt every time I participate in His life of grace. His love might be harsh or tender, compelling or comforting, wounding, or healing. But it's Him. Really Him. Present, available, and constant. Jesus is amazing.

5) I don't really love Jesus
I know...it doesn't fit.
St. Philip Neri (it's his memorial day today) had a famous ecstatic experience along the Appian Way in 1544 in which his being totally flooded with Divine Love caused him to scream out in pain "Enough, Lord, I can bear no more!" Although this was ecstatic and unusual, it illustrates the fact that we can't really take in the enormity of love that Jesus deserves. Any time we don't love someone with the totality of love they deserve, it's as though we don't love them at all.

I've decided to kill my next door neighbour.

He's in my way. I have to look at his house every day, and it just reminds me that behind the house is a fence, separating my yard from his. His existence is the main reason that my property (MY property) is not DOUBLE its current size.

I had no choice or voice in my neighbour's arrival. He moved in without consulting me at all. And he bothers me. I don't like the way he makes me feel or how he disrupts my normal routine.

I used protection. I made sure that all my junk mail got routed to the house next to mine. I messed up the lawn a bit so nobody would ever want to move in. I thought I could have huge parties in the empty house and never have to give them up, but nobody warned me about the dangers of a real person deciding to move in. When he moved in, I had to think about my life and what I really wanted. And I don't want him as a neighbour.

I also happen to know that he has a very low quality of life, and would be much happier without a neighbour like me who doesn't want him or love him. And I am sure there is nobody else out there who could ever want him as an adopted neighbour. Besides, if I did give him up for adoption, I would have to wait for the house to sell, and that's months from now before he's gone, and I would have to put up with all the open houses and all the "please don't walk on the grass -I'm showing the house" and then there's the moving truck that is a total pain in the breakfast-table-window-view. No, it would be far easier simply to kill him. Snuff him out quickly and painlessly. Much more effective, and frankly, more humane.

Now, some pro-property moralizing puritans might say something about how it's a "sin" to kill another human being, but they're SO last century. They really need to update their petty little moral code based on antiquated and highly gendered and class-based concepts. Property owners USED to rule the world...in the FEUDAL system....helloooo! Samuel de Champlain called and he wants his friggin' horse-drawn plow back. That SO does not fit with today's forward thinking. In fact, the distinction between property owners and non-property owners is totally a product of state-sponsored "othering" and promotes undemocratic, culturally insensitive attitudes toward people with different views.

And when it comes to respecting the dignity of life, who are THEY to lecture ME on how I should run MY life? How about my rights in this? I really, really want my neighbour's property, and frankly, he doesn't have the "right" to keep me from having it. After all, it's MY property value that's being affected here, and nobody, and I mean NOBODY, has the right to tell me what to do with it! Especially some property-owning, anti-lease, anti-rent, pro-fence xenophobic bigot who thinks that yard expansion and my self-actualization is some kid of a "sin" or should be against the law. Where do these people get off?

Trying to outlaw or prevent yard-expansion is simply backwards, and it will take us backwards as a society. The reality is that people have killed others for property since, like, forever. It's just a part of human existence (though the pro-fencers want to deny it). The real issue to address here is how to make the killings safe and humane, so that the operation doesn't revert to some back-alley coat hanger killing the way it happens in countries that don't have sophisticated weaponry or proper drugs for sedation. If the pro-fencers really cared about people, they would be fighting for better conquest healthcare, not less of it! Barbarians!!!

Calling this murder or sinful or wrong hurts my feelings, and will lead me to conclude that no moral system that suggests something I disagree with could ever be valid.

Can any doubt remain?

Stephen Harper didn't simply remain silent on abortion. He actively stated here that he will intentionally defeat any legislation that reopens the issue as long as he is PM.

Haper's hardly clear on anything, but he bothered to be articulate and unequivocal about this. Any doubt/hope in this regard that he created when he kept the CIDA money promised at the G8 Summit away from abortion-related activities overseas has been firmly squelched today.

Can any doubt remain that he is not and has never been the Christian candidate or the automatic choice for Christians? Can we all just acknowledge that there isn't one viable national party that stands for Christian morals, and then move on to judge parties on their platforms on their objective merit, knowing that none of them are going to even pretend to try to stop the baby killers?

It's an interesting read, just to hear him finally be really straightforward and clear on something. Read it here.