meekness

Zionism: Dismantling the Cross, the Judeo-Christian Deception

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There was an act of vandalism in Wales.  A Christian cross made of stones, which had been on a hill in the countryside for half a century, was torn apart by Jewish tourists who used the stones to create the ‘Star of David’ or hexagram shape.  This act goes beyond total disrespect and destruction of a Christian display, but it is also symbolic of what Zionism is and what it has been doing to Christianity in the West.  

Zionism isn’t Jewish.  Many Jews, even who live in the Holy Lands, are as fully opposed to the ethno-supremacist state called Israel as their Christian and Muslim neighbors.  It is not something allowed by their religion, they insist, and I’ll let Jewish people debate their theology for themselves.  But the vast majority of Zionists aren’t Jews nor do they live in Israel.  Most Zionists were American Protestants who have become ensnared in this political ideology that rearranges parts of the Bible to justify taking property from a population who have lived in the birthplace of Christ since his birth.

Christian Zionism is an oxymoron.  It takes two opposites, the kingdoms of the world offered to Jesus during his temptation that he rejected and acts like Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, who goes back deceptively to get the gifts Naaman tried to give to his master and was then struck down with leprosy by the curse of his master.  There are many in church pews today who have betrayed their master and have rearranged the timeline of Scripture to embrace an evil replacement of the way of Christ.  They dismantle the cross and support Zionism instead.

Schofield’s Coup: Dismantling the Cross

In 1909 a new Bible was published.  It used the same English translation of the popular King James version and yet added notes of commentary written by a man named Cyrus Ingerson Scofield.  Dispensationalism is a relatively new interpretation of Biblical texts that started in the early to mid 19th century, initially invented by John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren in Britain, but it took Scofield’s in text commentaries distributed widely to finally sell it.

We could get into questions of exactly who Scofield was, his character, that he was a Confederate soldier (deserter?); who was an alcoholic who abandoned his family; a man who had defrauded several prominent Republicans with a railroad scam; who was arrested and jailed in St Louis for forgery and embezzlement, then had a dramatic conversion to Christianity and yet this essay will stick to the work he was known for: His popularization of a novel theological stance dividing Israel and the church in Scripture.

In the Christian Bible there’s a fairly obvious shift in tone between the Old Testament (or Jewish Torah, prophets, etc) and teachings of Jesus in the Gospels.  The conventional Christian perspective is that Jesus came as fulfillment of the law and supercedes the covenant that was given to Abram who became Abraham.  But Scofield turns the clock back, he ignores what the Epistles tell us about correct understanding, and he adds an idea that there are essentially two paths to God—one going through Jesus and the cross, the other by the Old Covenant.

Christianity, according to the Apostles, is the faithful remnant.  Israel is now the Church and the Church is the true Israel.

Where this was just an amateur mistake or an intentional deception doesn’t matter.  It has resulted in a battle between those who basically claim that “one way, Jesus” is anti-Semitic statement and smear it as being “Replacement Theology” (ironic, given this was, is, and will remain the only orthodox Christian perspective) for saying that the New Covenant continuation of God’s plan and necessary for salvation.  It ignores the New Testament books where St Paul and others give a correct Christian perspective of the covenant given to Abraham.

Always Through Faith, Never Bloodlines…

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

(John 14:6 NIV)

I’m not nearly as dogmatic as some when it comes to passages like John 14:6 (above) and yet do see it as foundational to correct application of Scripture from the Christian perspective.  Jesus was making a definitive statement about who he is and the absolute requirements for salvation.  

The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ.

 (Galatians 3:16 NIV)

1) The passage above makes it very clear that the seed of Abraham is singular: Christ Jesus.  St Paul is saying that Jesus is that promise given to Abraham, that the promise is what bestows grace and continues:

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

(Galatians 3:26-29 NIV)

2) We all become Abraham’s seed though faith in Christ and there is no distinction by religion (keeping the law) or race.  In other words, Jews and Gentiles are both saved in the exact same way and the old distinctions become moot in fulfillment of the promise:

It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.  For if those who depend on the law are heirs, faith means nothing and the promise is worthless, because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression.  Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all.  As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not. 

(Romans 4:13-17 NIV)

3) Faith in Christ, nothing else, saves.

The Church and true Israel are the same, it is a group that is defined by faith both when those the Jews looked forward towards the promise and also in the Gospel fulfillment of the promise in the seed of Abraham that is Jesus.

Scofield, however, to justify Zionism, tries to drive a wedge between Christ and being the full fulfillment of promise or the seed of Abraham.  His footnotes take a passage like Genesis 12:3, addressed specifically to Abraham, about blessing those who bless him and cursing those who curse and then just hallucinate that it is speaking about all who ever have descended (but only through Isaac) from Abraham—no matter if they are faithful or not.  But this is in direct and total contradiction to the passages quoted above and simply meaning inserted into the text by a man fooled himself or just a fraud.

The Judeo-Christian Deception 

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 

(2 Corinthians 6:14-15 NIV)

Judeo-Christian is a term originally coined to describe a Jewish convert to Christianity, a Jewish Christian, but the usage has since evolved to become an oxymoronic coupling of religious traditions that formed up in full opposition to each other.  There is overlap, certainly, both started as religions rooted in the Hebrew Bible.  But one of the sides has rejected Christ, and is anti-Christ, while the other believes that the Torah can truly only be understood through the lens of Christ.  If your values start with something other than Christ then they’re not the same values as a Christian.

Starting with Jesus instructing his followers to let their ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and ‘no’ be ‘no’ (Matt 5:37) or to use simple honest language.  So much dishonesty comes in from of a subtle twist of words.  For example, calling majorly invasive surgeries and hormone treatments “gender-affirming care” is just not the plain reality of what is being done.  Semantics is all about describing reality, but can also be about distorting the perspective and an art of deception.  There is no similar rule about using honest speech in Talmudic or Zionist Judiasm.  Mossad, the intelligence agency of Israel, used “By way of deception, thou shall do war.“

Stratagem is part of war theory and tactics.  But it is not part of Christianity.  St Paul tells us:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 

(Ephesians 6:12 NIV)

The Christian doesn’t overcome the ‘enemy’ with deception.  They overcome them with good, with honesty and love, this is to reject the methods and means of those who see those outside their religio-political group as being terrorists to be destroyed or resource to exploited.  We are not required to reason with animals, we herd them, slaughter them, shoot them for sport, and impose our will—and is exactly what the Zionists do to those who get in their way.  There is no command to love enemies or good to those who those who hate you as there is in Christianity:

But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. 

(Luke 6:27-31 NIV)

Interestingly enough, Islam has a similar teaching, but we would never call this area of confluence Islamo-Christian values.  So why do we attempt to add the leaven of the Pharisees through this linguistic maneuver that marries us to a religion that has values completely different despite a similar origin point?  The “Synagogue of Satan” (Rev 2:9, 3:9) has never stopped hating Christ or His followers, they have simply committed to a long-game strategy of subversion or using the naive to do their bidding.  This isn’t even a value judgment, I’m not saying you should not be Jewish if that is what you believe is, but you can’t be a Judeo-Christian because it is a contradiction of terms.

If a suggestion of “Islamo-Christian values” causes you to erupt in riotous laughter, then the combo of the way of Jesus with that of Zionism is doubly as ridiculous.  

Philosophically there is zero compatibility in these perspectives.  It is impossible to love and bomb your enemies.  You cannot claim to follow Jesus, who rejected worldly power, and then support the violence being done in the name of Israeli statehood.  Zionism is a “blood and soil” nationalist movement, and is all about land, all about ethnicity, whereas the kingdom of heaven is about repentance, self-sacrifice and meekness.  The only thing that is sacrificed in ‘Christian’ Zionism is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the credibility of our collective witness—so our partners can slather themselves in misguided pride for being the chosen race.

Not good, especially when one is pulling the other backwards…

The real purpose of a term “Judeo-Christian values” is political and propaganda.  It is to throw a yoke on the neck of Christians and force them to work together.  It is simply a way to control one side and normalize the other.  There is no backward compatibility, a believer in Christ does not share values with those who reject him, with those who cling to national pride rather than the cross, and subjugate rather than serve.  Jesus opened his arms to children—Zionists justify killing children by starvation, by denying them care or even by burning them alive and gunning them down.

Origen, who is considered to be a church Father, may have toyed with universalism—an idea that all would be saved in the end.  But there is no parallel path that is given for anyone according to Jesus or the Apostles, most especially not for those who are far removed from Jesus as the Nazis—despite their claims to the contrary.  We cannot let the cross of Christ be rearranged into the symbol of a worldly kingdom.  Having some things in common with those who rejected Christ doesn’t make us the same.

Coddled to Death—How the West Made Weakness a Virtue

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My son complains that he doesn’t get paid enough for household chores.  He feels he is somehow entitled to everything that we’re giving him and more.  It is a struggle trying to explain why we won’t simply hand him all that he wants.  We have plenty, in his eyes, and can just share our wealth with him.  But the reason we hold back isn’t our greed or that we don’t want him to have the best life has to offer.  No, quite the contrary, in fact, it is because we want him to do well life that we resist the urge to coddle him.

What is coddling?

On the surface it is being overprotective and indulgent.  It stems from distrust of another other person’s ability to deal with normal life situations and emotions on their own.  And, while it may appear to be motivated by love or compassion, it only ever empowers those who keep the other confined to the bubble wrapped world.  It is the devouring mother, the one who uses their nurture as a tool of control.  They only care about the target of their efforts so far as it feeds their ego or feelings of self-importance.  It is a virtue signal and degrades those coddled.

Bigotry of Low-expectations

Along with thoughts about parenting and the goal, some of the inspiration for writing this came from the governor of the state of New York, Kathleen Hochul, who declared:

Young black kids growing up in the Bronx, who don’t even know what the word a computer is, they don’t know. They don’t know these things. And I want the world open up to all of them, because when you have their diverse voices, innovating solutions through technology, then you’re really addressing societies broader challenges.

Other than to call this statement what it is: Bigotry (or racism) of low expectations and patronization.  I’ll not pile on.

Many, like Hochul, are isolated.  They have not spent much time in urban communities nor met the people who live there.  From my own first hand experience her claim (which she now claims was misspoken) is absurd, none of the black I met were unfamiliar with or incapable of using computers.  Many of my acquaintances there could afford to go to college and more credentialed than I am, so where does this notion come from that they’re hapless ignorant people in desperate need of government assistance?

The answer, in this case at least, is that it is hard to maintain a bloated state budget (let alone greedily expand it) without somehow justifying it and what better way to do that convince people that they need you to get somewhere in life?

Condescending political elites are not moral paradigms and minority voters are not stupid.  I believe those pandered to know it is insincere and coming from someone who sees them as dumb.  But they also understand it works to their advantage and don’t say no to it.  We naturally take the path of least resistance and rationalize why we are deserving of the help.  By playing up the consequences of slavery and impacts of racial prejudice, a little wealth redistribution (looting or theft) can be redeemed as social justice.

Unfortunately, low expectations produces what it is supposed to remedy, it gives an excuse to wait around for a handout and kills initiative.  This contributes to racism in that it creates the impression that the only way some can compete is by lowering the bar or a double standard.  It diminishes the accomplishments of those who knew what a computer is without the help of those in the the benevolent class.  Now, because of politicians meddling, there is the question, did they earn it by being the best candidate or are they a diversity hire?

Woke is Weak

My conservative friends wouldn’t likely see the link between Christianity and wokism, but it is definitely there.  The woke glorify the victim and reframe accomplishment as unearned privilege.  For those who started a business, “You didn’t build that” they reason, and nullify the hard work and the sacrifice of those who followed the entrepreneurial spirit to success.  Likewise, in church we’re encouraged to tithe generously and be charitable since it is giving back a portion of all that is given to us by God.  The difference being that the woke want us to give to the government, the religious their own organizations.

And there’s nothing wrong with our helping those in need.  I provide for my son and my wife as well.  However, when I give I give to empower rather make them dependent and weaker.  My hope is for my son to grow his strength and ability so that in time he does not need me to survive.  And the same thing is true of my wife, she is my partner not my patron, we both contribute different things to the whole and neither of us is entitled to what the other gives to the relationship.  It is how a real community works, we give and take as necessary, and we do it for the good of the common project.

Wokism, by contrast, is motivated by envy and pity, it encourages fragility by marking off space spaces and enforcement of strict language codes.  Again, this strict regulation has a parallel in religious fundamentalism.  Home schooling parents are terrified of the influence of the ‘world’ on their children.  They, like the woke, overemphasize the role of the environment in the formation of the individual.  The one exempts swaths of the population from the normal civil expectation (while increasing the burden on others) and the other thinks salvation of poor little Johnny depends on them.  Bad behavior always blamed on an external influence rather than a lack of will to do better on the part of their designated eternal victims.

This is what Friedrich Nietzsche critiqued as being a hatred for life.  When we remove temptation rather than ever teach children to resist it—when we are constantly vilifying strength rather than encourage it—when we follow after reasoning or rationality instead of developing our instincts, we are promoting the weakness of our society and degeneration. 

Woke is weak.  It attempts to foster spirits of ressentiment and forms an identity around a person’s fear of being disenfranchised for things completely out of their control.  And in the end it destroys the incentive to find a way to overcome by our own means.

The Meek Shall Inherit 

Neitzsche could be accused of painting with too broad a brush for the dismissal of the Christian ethic as slave morality and an opposition to the powerful.

The message of Jesus and his Apostles was, in part, freedom from those human laws of “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!” (Colossians 2:21) and very nearly could be the “will to power” that the German philosopher championed once unpacked.  Hedonism wasn’t the goal of the departure from “slave-morality,” the aim was instead for people to exercise will-power and resolve.  In the same manner Jesus and St Paul preached freedom from the law that brought only bondage and death:

But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

(Romans 7:6 NIV)

This is not to suggest that there is any kind of compatibility between the Spirit-led and the Übermensch.  Nevertheless, both would have us abandon a lower morality based on restrictions for a pursuit of our own ultimate form.  To St. Paul the Gospel means we are free from “the flesh” or the unbridled urges, while Nietzsche thinks we’re instinctively at our best, and both men are not opposed to impulse control.  The big difference is that the Apostle’s answer is spiritual whereas the philosopher says that additional layer is not needed and morality a hindrance.  Both would disagree devaluing the attitudes and culture that lead to success.  Being master of ourselves requires strength and never allows for excuses.  

Furthermore, the Jesus of the Bible wasn’t weak, he spoke with authority and we are told that he had power over all things, but he chose a meek posture rather than wield this power destructively.  Now it is a matter of faith if you accept this or not.  I could say that I could strangle Mike Tyson yet choose not to.  Talk is cheap.  But meekness is the ability to restrain ourselves.  Having the power to impose our will is always desirable, nobody wants to be at the mercy of the elements or other people.  However, sacrifice for sake of the next generation is better, to parent is to live beyond ourselves, that is why this is an instinct for those who have children, and it is the role of the Father.

When I wrestle with my son I don’t use all of my strength.  I would hurt him if I employed full power.  My goal is not to destroy him, he is not my enemy or threat to obliterate, but it is to train and strengthen him.  I restrain to protect him currently and also challenge to protect him in the future.  That is the real Biblical kind of meekness, it submission to the greater role we can serve as protectors and builders of civilization.  It is the having all things in balance, which Nietzsche might agree, and using our strength to take on the burden of creating the future.  We do not retreat from life.  Faith requires the we go headlong into the fight rather than hide or be ruled by resentment.

Late-stage Protestantism

I can understand the campaign Nietzsche waged against morality in light of wokeism and virtue signaling nonsense.  Apparently he was very well-versed in theology and did not find answers there.  Which is correct, it is not intellect that brings us life, study for sake of study is vanity, and truth is more in the practical telos than in some theoretical construct.  Nietzsche attacks rationality and reason as an end and those things do implode upon themselves when no longer grounded in a higher life-serving purpose.

The current ideological push for wokeism, and the mindless promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion at the expense of standards, merit or competency, is simply another step down the path of trying to eliminate all suffering and in the process destroying excellence.  I want my son to face some hardship, even if it is only artificial, because his striving will build strength.  It is the thought behind Proverbs 13:24: 

Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.

Or, as Nietzsche postulates in Beyond Good and Evil:

The discipline of suffering, of great suffering – do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far? 

In the same vein, in The Will to Power, he wrote:

To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities – I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not – that one endures.

No, I don’t want my son to be last picked for his dark skin.  And yet I also don’t want him to live in a world so sanitized that he’ll need to invent offenses (in the same way that an autoimmune disorder is the body attacking itself) then expects me to always step in on his behalf rather than face it.  Success in life requires some voluntary submission or suffering for sake of our goals.  Coddling and bigotry of low expectations does not serve the long-term benefit of children or civilization.

We need to discard this ugly paradigm of late-stage Protestantism.  There are great men, powerful and worthy of our respect, then there are those in desperate need of improvement.  We don’t help the latter by going soft and changing the requirements to make everything easier.  There is nothing radical or reforming about the direction the church in the West has gone.  This “have it our way” drive has led to a fracturing of the church, a consumerist mentality in worship and a new religion without obligation to the fathers or their commands.

Woke is simply the latest development in the direction.  It is the child with imperfect parents now thinking they know better and don’t need the silly disciplines of their parents to thrive.  Whether Anglican or Anabaptist, it is always about rejection of authority and the hierarchies established by the early church and originating with Christ.  We think we can do better, that the home is better if there is equal with no patenting or need for development of conscience.  In the end we get the complete agnosticism which goes further and to destroy everything the generations of faithful built for our good. 

Attainment and success doesn’t need to be made more accessible.  My son may think he deserves everything without effort, that we’re hoarding a kind of wealth just given to us and undeserved.  But that’s his ignorance.  There are no shortcuts to heaven and you can only keep the benefits of civilization if you continue to maintain the very foundation it is built upon.  We think that we will be saved by technology and the vague notions of progress of those who think power comes from the stroke of a pen—but that’s not how we got here nor is it a path to a better future.