Stephen Roney's Blog, page 273

An Anti-Christmas Carol

Heard this morning what purports to be a new Christmas song: “At This Table.”

Since it is claimed to be a Christmas song, and seems to refer to the Eucharist, it is troublesome that it has its theology gravely wrong. The line that jumped out at me is “At this table, there will be no judgement.” That obviously directly contradicts both the New Testament and the Apostles’ Creed, definitive of Christian teaching: “He will come again to judge the living and the dead.”

This is not Christianity, but modern pop psychology, which holds that there is nothing wrong with sinning, only with judgement.

The Devil’s counsel.

This modern amoral message is underlined by the repeated phrase in the song “come as you are.” No need for repentance, faith, or a change of heart. One does not come as you are to communion; confession, fasting, and repentance is required. There is a difference between right and wrong.

“At this table, everyone is welcome.” This sounds reassuring, but is not what the gospel teaches.

When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees
coming to his baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers!
Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?
Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.”

The first Eucharist is held before a select group, the Twelve, in an upper room. It is not done in public before all. Jesus counselled deliberately concealing things from the masses: he coined the phrase “pearls before swine.”

This is a song of the antichrist.


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Jimmy Fallon as Justin Trudeau

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The Prosperity Gospel

Pray and Get Rich.
To please a friend, I once attended a video showing promoting the “prosperity gospel.” It was like a corporate motivational speech.

The basic message I got is “God has chosen you for leadership.” So he’s going to grant you prosperity, presumably so you have the means to lead.

Is this a legitimate premise?

It seems to defy the Gospel of Luke, which actually seems to see the possession of significant wealth as itself sinful. Witness the story of the rich man and Lazarus: the rich man goes to Hell purely for not sharing his wealth.

And it defies the nature of God.

If giving away one’s wealth to the needy is a good deed, then anyone who has significant wealth is lacking in at least one good deed. Why then are they the leader? Why are they chosen by God above their moral betters?

The prosperity gospel therefore seems to require the Calvinist assumption of predestination: some of us are chosen before birth for salvation, and are given all good things. Nothing to do with our own merits.

I do not see how this can be reconciled with a morally good God: this is a God who plays favourites. This is as bad as we are if we discriminate against some, say, simply for the colour of their skin.

A Lutheran might counter that the distinguishing feature is faith: God rewards those who put their faith in him.

But no honest man can simply choose to believe. An honest man seeks truth. And a moral God does not reward dishonesty.

And surely, as a practical matter, all of us know people of deep religious faith, who are poor.
Actually, Jesus does not pay as well as Moses.
God does clearly choose some to lead. Moses is the perfect example; the prophets in general. The saints.

How many of the prophets were prosperous?

Moses died before reaching the promised land of milk and honey.

John the Baptist wore animal skins and ate locusts. He died in prison.

Isaiah risked starvation, had he not been fed by angels in a cave, a price on his head.

They apparently did not need personal wealth in order to lead. They experienced extreme poverty instead.

This is not a universal rule: David and Solomon achieved kingship, and there are a few crowned saints. Wealth is not proof of sinfulness. Yet both David and Solomon, good men as they began, fell into grave sin as a direct result of the temptations of wealth and secular power.

Jesus defines Christian leadership: “You know that the rulers of the nations lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. Whoever desires to be first among you shall be your bondservant, even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

This surely defies the prosperity gospel.

Material wealth, the New Testament makes clear in many passages, is always at least a distraction from the divine. “One cannot serve both God and Mammon.”

Moreover, if doing good brought obvious material rewards, there would be no morality left in doing good. The worst of us would do good out of self-interest.

Accordingly, a just God must have ordered the universe so that morality will cost us wealth, not acquire it.

This also requires the existence of some kind of happy afterlife: a just God must ultimately favour the good. Yet for the good to be good, the favour must be shown in such a way that the rewards for goodness are not visible and obvious to all.

And so the reward must come in some invisible later state.

Jesus explains it: in this present field, God sows the evil with the good. He must allow the weeds to thrive amidst the wheat. All is separated at the harvest, on the final threshing floor.


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For Advent

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The Mean Streets

I grow weary of the atmosphere of hate that has descended on Toronto and Canada.

Now magazine’s current issue looks back on the decade.

On Rob Ford: “blundering incompetent.” “A pretty awful person.” “Whiny, occasionally racist.”

Ford, of course, was elected mayor of Toronto. A majority of Torontonians must have basically agreed with his approach on the issues. Yet no attempt is made to argue these claims: they are just asserted. No civil dialogue is contemplated.

It then baldly asserts Jian Ghomeshi’s guilt, even though the charges against him were dismissed in court. His acquittal made sexual assault victims, Now explains, “realize that they can’t count on the courts to make their abusers accountable.”

Again, no explanation of why the court was supposedly so wrong—his guilt is merely asserted. We are all to hate Jian Ghomeshi.

Maxime Bernier and the PPC are referred to as “wacko,” again without explanation. Bernier is, of course, a former Foreign Minister, and came within a whisker of being the leader of Canada’s official opposition. No explanation; we are to hate Bernier and all those who support him.

A demonstration held to protest Motion 103 is declared, without evidence, to really be an expression of “anti-Muslim” sentiments. The “Proud Boys” are described as “anti-Muslim”; their web page prominently welcomes “All Races. All Religions.” “Never Again Canada,” is accused of holding protests “under the guise of” opposing immigration. This seems odd, since there is nothing on their web page opposing immigration. There is, on the other hand, a long statement objecting to anti-Muslim sentiments, and calling for “the concern and participation of all Canadians, regardless of ethnicity, religion, and politics.” Their stated purpose is to combat antisemitism. Their real intent, of which the author apparent has some secret knowledge, is apparently something deeply nefarious. Perhaps they planned to poison the wells.

You can see how this stirring up of contempt for some identifiable group could lead to violence—against members of “Never Again Canada.”

The magazine then asserts another sinister conspiracy on campuses: “hate has spread to university campuses under the guise of free speech.” No evidence is presented that those calling for free speech really want to practice “hate.”

Faith Goldy is declared “dangerous” and also accused of “propagating hate.” Again, no evidence is offered. She probably is, as the paper asserts, a “white nationalist.” But so what? They have no problem with “black nationalists” like “Black Lives Matter,” who get to write their own account of the decade. To object only to whites being nationalists is, surely, to promote hatred towards whites.

In that “Black Lives Matter” insertion, Toronto police are accused of “police brutality” against blacks, and of a “long and sordid history of discrimination and harassment.” The local schools are accused of “anti-Black racism.” Toronto in general is accused of “the violence of anti-Black racism.” The Toronto Pride movement is accused of “anti-Blackness.” Mass culture is accused of “anti-Black racism.” “White folks” are declared to be “privileged.”

Now magazine then celebrates an anticipated future “not full of plays by dead white males.”

Toronto is declared a “hotbed” of “Islamophobia.” The temporary shutdown of Soufi’s restaurant is ascribed to “racism and xenophobia”--no reference to the incident that caused its business to fall off. A member of the family was seen on video berating a little old lady as a racist and refusing to let her attend a political meeting. Seems to me that might have had something to do with it.

Incels—involuntarily celibate men—are offered no sympathy. They are accused of a “sense of entitlement.” That might be so, but then why not the same charge against the gay community, or the trans community, who also consider themselves entitled to have sex? Incels alone are openly despised.

It is a meaner, uglier Toronto than it used to be.




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The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy

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Trump Strikes the Right Note

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Hong Kong Is Not Tiananmen

I have seen exactly one media report that the protests in Hong Kong have now spread to Guangdong Province.

I have waited a few days for someone else to confirm this, but no one has.

It is probably not true. There are often sporadic protests in China; what this reporter saw or heard may only have been business as usual.

What I hear from foreigners in Guangdong is that the mainland Chinese strongly support the government against the Hong Kong protesters, whom they see as a foreign element. Despite the blood ties, and the longtime insistence on “one nation.”

This makes matters grim for Hong Kong.

Tiananmen was a serious risk to the CCP, because of the danger that their troops might refuse to fire on their own countrymen. This is how revolutions start; when the military turns. But so long as the typical mainland Chinese sees Hong Kong Chinese as other, Hong Kong can be crushed at any moment by troops sent in. Word is that this is already happening: the Hong Kong police have stealthily been replaced by People’s Army regulars wearing the same uniforms.

If the spirit of resistance in Hong Kong really were to spread into Guangdong, the consequences would be dire for the Party. Guangdong is China’s economic hub; it is crowded with migrants who have streamed in from every part of China for better prospects. If the government were to brutally suppress a rebellion there, everyone else in China would likely see their own relatives in that crowd. Moreover, if the authorities successfully crushed a rebellion in Guangdong, they would likely disperse all these migrants back to their original homes—spreading the fires of rebellion far and wide.

And, of course, Guangdong being China’s economic hub, the financial consequences of disruption there would be critical.

Which brings us back to Hong Kong.

It seems likely the only reason the Chinese government is hesitating to crush Hong Kong is the fear of the economic fallout. China’s economy is already looking vulnerable. If Hong Kong was toppled from its roost as a world banking and trading centre, and sanctions and bad PR in reaction to a brutal suppression caused other businesses to pull investments throughout China, the danger to the regime might be greater than the danger from these continuing protests.

Put these things together, and the Chinese government itself must feel itself very vulnerable. It is caught on a knife edge, and struggling to keep its balance.



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For Advent

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Inevitable Democratic Nominee Drops Out

Kamala Harris
So Kamala Harris is out of the race to become the Democratic US presidential candidate.

Honesty obliges me to note that I had picked her as most likely to win.

To be fair, I did also note that she was inexperienced and untested, and so might implode.

She imploded.

So now, who do I think will win?

The matter is clouded—clouded enough to have prompted some late entries to the race. Everybody seems to see the race as up for grabs.

But right now, I’d put my money on Bernie Sanders.

Granted, the media star of the moment is Pete Buttigieg. But these sudden surges to the top of the field are not to be taken too seriously. Each candidate seems to get their turn in the spotlight, and then fall back. If Buttigieg is surging now, it is probably too soon to serve him well by the time the Iowa caucuses come around. Instead, he may be killed now by raised expectations not being met.

Buttigieg is also unappealing to black voters; they may not matter much in Iowa or New Hampshire, but that will kill him in the later primaries. I don’t think this is something that can be fixed by outreach. Pete is too preppy.

And fundamentally, it is just nuts to nominate the mayor of a small Midwestern city, sans anything epoch-making in his platform. For comparison, Lloyd Henderson, former mayor of Portage-la-Prairie, a comparably-sized Canadian city, ran for the Liberal Party leadership in 1968. Anyone else remember? He received no votes.

In the end, it would be a profound embarrassment to the Party to nominate Mayor Pete. Is this really the best they can do?

His relative inexperience as a politician also makes him vulnerable, like Harris but more so, to either a fatal gaffe or some previously undiscovered closet cadaver.

Yet a reasonably strong Buttigieg candidacy tends to split Biden’s vote. If he can run first or second in Iowa and New Hampshire, it guarantees that Biden cannot take those contests.

At present, Sanders is in second place in both early states. He stands to benefit if Buttigieg falls short, and he stands to benefit even if Buttigieg takes them, then fails in later contests: he has staked his ground as the alternative, the non-Buttigieg and champion of the radical wing. Meanwhile, the moderate delegates will be split between Buttigieg and whatever candidate inherits the more moderate vote in later primaries.

Biden is still leading in the national polls. But national polls matter less than Iowa and New Hampshire. Biden is not close in Iowa and New Hampshire. Even if Buttigieg stumbles before those states vote, they like to do something surprising and transgressive. Voting for Biden does not fit that profile, since he is the nominal front-runner and the most familiar of the candidates. Voting for Biden would be boring. More probable would be a surprise surge by Yang, or Gabbard, or Steyer.

So Biden’s strategy, of necessity, is to take losses in both states, then start winning in South Carolina and the South.

That strategy has never worked before. The negative media resulting from the two losses, plus the buzz around the winner, tends to kill all momentum. Biden’s strategy is Rudy Giuliani’s strategy in 2008. Giuliani led the national polls too. And Biden is actually running not second, but third, in both states. He is not even establishing himself as the natural alternative.

For a while, the centre lane in the race was uncrowded, while candidates were all shuffling left. In particular, Elizabeth Warren’s strong candidacy was splitting Sanders’s natural constituency. That made Biden look strong. Now that situation seems reversed. Warren has fallen dramatically in the polls. Having had two campaign revivals, I do not think she is likely to rise again. Her insincerity has finally sunken in with Democratic voters. Sincerity is more important than it used to be. Perceived lack of sincerity sunk Kamala Harris, and it looks like it is sinking Warren now almost as decisively.

In the meantime, new candidates have been poaching Biden’s following. Buttigieg has moved to sound more moderate; Steyer, Bloomberg, and Patrick have entered the space. Steyer and Bloomberg seem to be posting significant numbers. Those are numbers largely bled from Biden.

So Sanders and Buttigieg come out of Iowa and New Hampshire as the two leading candidates. Most likely with Sanders on top, Buttigieg underperforming based on prior expectations. Then Buttigieg fails in later primaries, because he cannot appeal to the black vote; and because he is no longer so fresh. Moderate vote splits between Biden and Bloomberg and Buttigieg, at a minimum. Bloomberg can stay in the race as long as he wants, being self-financing. Quite likely Steyer as well. But the radical vote quickly coalesces around Bernie.

I think a sudden surge by some dark horse, a stealth win or near-win in Iowa, may yet overturn the race. But that is more or less unpredictable. Based on what is predictable, I see Sanders as the most likely nominee.



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