5-13-13<\/p>\n
\u201cTo sacrifice what you are, and to live without belief: that is a fate more terrible than dying.\u201d So declared Joan of Arc. \u201cOne life is all we have, and we live it as we believe in living it.\u201d Joan was a martyr, but she was also a revolutionary. No less a hero of the faith was Martin Luther a few centuries later. Offered a pardon from excommunication, torture, and death if he merely recanted his written opinions, he declined and said to his accusers words that have thundered through the ages: \u201cHere I stand. I can do no other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heresies nibbled around the edges of the early Church two thousand years ago. Often they were persuasive enough to some believers that creeds were codified in order to resist error. \u201cWhat do we believe? Let us keep things fresh in our minds, and write these principles down, that we might meditate on them, and bequeath them, properly, to our children.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today most churches have forgotten the creeds. Protestant churches often ignore them. Many churches no longer recite the Lord\u2019s Prayer. There is no vacuum, however: their places have been filled by rituals like Exchanging the Peace. \u201cPeace be with you.\u201d A holy kiss. A three-pat hug. We care<\/em>, as Christ commended. Programs exist to facilitate, and prove, that caring<\/em> impulse, for all the world to see.<\/p>\n The impulses that Jesus admonished us to adopt, as His followers \u2013 charity, for instance \u2013 frequently have been co-opted by governments. It would be wrong to say that the Modern State has been a pickpocket or a thief of our prerogatives and rights and inclinations, however. Contemporary Christians largely have surrendered the traditional tenets of their faith, willingly ceding the role of the church to the state. No \u201cseparation\u201d there.<\/p>\n \u201cThe mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.\u201d So declared Satan in John Milton\u2019s \u201cParadise Lost,\u201d Book I, 254-255. \u201cBetter to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven\u201d (263).<\/p>\n The Bible predicts that in the End Times, people will call evil good, and good evil. Even the saints \u2013 devout churchgoers \u2013 will be deceived. Even believers will have \u201citching ears\u201d ready to listen to perversions of the Truth and excuses for immorality.<\/p>\n In recent days the trial of a Philadelphia abortionist accused by his employees of killing babies after live births, and causing the deaths of some mothers, has trickled through the filters of news media that do not think such atrocities are newsworthy\u2026 or blameworthy. He was found guilty, and Planned Parenthood hoped the killing would continue… but in facilities \u201ccleaner\u201d than Philadelphia\u2019s angel of death. A Cleveland man is accused of imprisoning three girls as sex slaves for a decade, inducing abortions by physical abuse. Elsewhere, judges who prevent 15-year-old girls from having aspirin pills or cigarettes in school, ruled that girls of that age, and younger \u2013 no age restrictions \u2013 can buy \u201cabortion pills\u201d over the counter, with no doctors\u2019 approvals nor parental notifications.<\/p>\n We have been taught that ancient cultures practiced infant sacrifice to appease their gods, and we have been taught to regard those societies as triangulated somewhere in the middle of barbaric, primitive, and deluded. Just so. But what is it about our own culture \u2013 Our GDP and economy? wide-screen TVs? iPods? college degrees? sports cars? \u2013 that makes us any different? <\/p>\n We sacrifice children, even babies, to the gods of Convenience, of Lust, of Selfishness, of Political Correctness. The older cultures burned babies on flaming pyres, or threw them into volcanoes. We sever babies\u2019 necks and toss them into dumpsters, or let them sift between the culture\u2019s cracks into basement dungeons or for sale to \u201ctrafficking\u201d networks.<\/p>\n This, in Christian America. Or what has become \u2013 let us be honest, no longer \u201cthreatening\u201d to become \u2013 Post-Christian America. <\/p>\n +++<\/p>\n How many of us long to return to simpler times? Do we need to be in the shadow of Solomon\u2019s Temple? Is there no substitute for the fire of the First-Century Church? Should we burn with the fervor of biblical reform, as did Martin Luther? Must we sit under \u201chard preaching,\u201d as Puritans under Jonathan Edwards? Maybe. But some of us would just like to live in a world, again, where a simple \u201cmother\u2019s faith\u201d nurtured us, protected us, guided us. And these scenes were sacred, not ridiculed.<\/p>\n