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#repost

In my life I keep quoting this post I made in February. When we are facing the dragons in our lives, it is our Lord that the victory belongs to, not us. If our Lord willed our pens would break and ours swords would become mere cardboard tubes. It is only by His will that victory is had and to Him be the glory.

Sometimes I swing my flimsy sword at the throats of dragons and have the audacity to think my half-hearted thrust mattered in their fall whilst ignoring the Lion’s roaring bellow behind me.

Let me not claim victories that do not belong to me. Let me recognize the power of God, for I am but a jar of clay.

Christo­fascism: A Follow-Up

Yikes. Some people cannot read more than a word or two.

  1. Christofascism isn’t a political ideology, movement, etc.
  2. Christofascism isn’t fascism. Never was.
  3. Christofascism is an insult coined by a liberal Christian to insult and shame orthodox Christians into shutting up.

Now that you have a summary, read the post.

Christo­fascism

I learned a new word this week: Christofascism. This term was lobbed my direction. So, like any curious person does, I looked it up. Modern argumentation is heavily reliant on insults and pseudo-insults that make people not want to engage in argument or to recoil and defend themselves. Look at any of the recently concocted phobias. It is a way of saying “there is no debate allowed.” Christofascist looked like one of these terms, so I looked it up. And it’s a curious one.

First, it was coined by Dorothee Sölle in the 1970’s. She was a liberation theologian. To most Christians that know their history, that is a heretical Marxist break-off from Christianity that has spun out many dangerous— and theologically grievous— cults that are in no way orthodox Christianity. Just look through her Wikipedia entry and you’ll see we wouldn’t allow her anywhere near a church conference.

Second, the term was specifically coined to describe “fundamentalists” and frankly, orthodox Christians. Tom F. Driver stated that “[w]e fear christofascism, which we see as the political direction of all attempts to place Christ at the center of social life and history.”

Third, the term was described by George Hunsinger— a reformed theologian— as “a sophisticated theological attack on the biblical depiction of Jesus.” He criticized the theology of opponents of Christofascism as extreme relativism that reduces Jesus Christ to “an object of mere personal preference and cultural location”.

So to be clear, this term was coined by liberation theology Marxists to insult orthodox Christians. And the insult comes down to “you ugly!” It doesn’t actually criticize orthodoxy, it just coins a new term for it.

“You don’t want to be a fascist, do you?! Then you cannot believe in a Jesus that is the only way to Heaven or should be King of all, center of social life and history. That is fascism. Don’t be a fascist.”

I’m gonna break it to you lightly, “NUH-UH!”

These childish neologisms to shut down conversation and shut down debate by guilting people into shutting up are tiresome. Christian, be curious and keep debating.

Life is fleeting, if one thing can be a guarantee. We all go out. Some in a blaze of glory and others as a low whisper. One way or the other, our candle gets snuffed out. And once it does, do you know for sure where you’ll stand?

In a blink, you could be gone. You may have told yourself that you had time to think about this later, but life doesn’t work that way. All it takes is a blink.

Do you know what comes next? Do you know for sure?

We all know we’re not perfect. It’s like a meter is built into us. Something tells us that we make mistakes. This conscience is real and is a gift from God. You are not perfect, but perfection is what God expects.

You may think that faith is for the old, but death does not discriminate on age. You may think religion just a list of do’s and don’ts, but that’s not the way it was supposed to be. The law is to protect us from sin. The things God considers wrong can hurt us. Disobeying these laws is sin. Disobeying God is sin. This isn’t petty, but protective.

A perfect God judges perfectly. What crimes have you committed? Have you committed adultery? Jesus said that if you look on a woman with lust, that you have committed adultery in your heart. Have you ever looked at a woman lustfully? If so, you are an adulterer. Have you ever lied? If so, you are liar. Have you ever committed murder? Jesus said that if you call you brother stupid, you’ve committed murder in your heart.

If you were judged today, what would be the verdict? You might think that your good deeds might count for something, but imagine sitting for a judge in your hometown. You murdered your brother. The evidence is stacked against you. And so you plea with the judge, “Look at my bank account, sir. I have given so much money to charity! Look at my calendar: I have given so much time to help others!” But the judge is to judge you for your crime. You killed a man. You killed your brother. What should a just judge do?

The good news, though, is that your sin can be covered. The law came with a sacrificial system. Pay your due for your sins. Count up all the sins that you have committed and pay the fine.

Is the number too large, the task to hard? You’d be right to think so, because the law was to point people to the hopelessness of our sin. It binds us, holds us down. Even if we provided sacrifice after sacrifice, we would never be free from our sin.

But your sin can be covered. A sacrifice was made. Jesus, the Son of God, came down not to extend a sword, but a hand. This is why a Christian cannot believe that multiple ways to God exist. Our sin is the problem and the only way for it to be forgive is by a sacrifice. Jesus was that sacrifice, he was that pure lamb, the first of creation. His life was without sin, he lived by the law. But the purpose of his life was to take our sin away, so at the prime of his life, the government took him before a judge, accused him of things he wasn’t guilt of, and gave him the ultimate punishment: death.

You might not believe this story. You likely have heard it before. You might think that Jesus was just a good man, but that good man said he was God, man. He claimed to be messiah, the chosen one, the Son of God and God himself. You can do the research. I have. You can read it in the Bible or you can read what historians say. No historian disagrees with Jesus’ existence. No historian disagrees with what is recorded in the Bible about him. Some question whether he was right.

But would you take the chance that he was wrong? His followers didn’t. They followed his words until their deaths, often at the hands of oppressors and aggressors. Stoned to death for disagreeing with the establishment, crucified for teaching a different message, thrown in prison on a remote island to grow old. But in the face of death, their faith seemed to grow stronger and bolder. A sane man following a lie would not die to not look like a liar. At least one would break rank. But none did. Historical accounts show that the early Christians, those that saw Jesus after he rose from the dead, lived life at the edge, never fearing death and always preaching life everlasting.

Life is fleeting.

The story is not a lie. It is no fabrication. You will die. You will face judgment. You know what the verdict is because it is written on your heart. You know that you haven’t done enough good to outweigh your crimes. Blink and life is gone.

The good news is a single choice is all it takes. Make the choice to follow Jesus today. Not later today. Right now. The Bible says all you must do is turn from your sins, take up your cross, and follow Jesus. You are not expected to come to him clean. You’ll be cleaned by him. You are not expected to have things in order. He’s got you covered.

A blink can make the difference. Don’t blink and let your life be taken away. Make the choice right now. Follow Jesus. Assurance is given to those that follow him. Your sin will be covered. The judge will look at you and see his son. He’ll see what his son did. You don’t want the alternative.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, y’all. Like St. Nicholas, I absolutely revel in the stories of St. Patrick.

St. Patrick was tremendously effective and saw many pagans turn to put their faith in Christ. Despite how his extant writings testify to how much he missed his homeland, he chose to live and serve among the Irish he grew to love. He even suffered imprisonment and persecution at the hands of the Druids. But his dedicated and tireless evangelistic efforts, according to tradition, resulted in his baptizing 120,000 new believers and building over 300 churches in Ireland. He served and worked among the people for 30 years before he died on March 17, 461, and was buried in Ireland.

Answers in Genesis

Love the story of St. Patrick, a man after God’s heart, sharing the Gospel to the natives of a dark land. Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Stay safe.

Wrote this five years ago. Then it was Bootstrap and a bunch of JavaScript ninjas that didn’t know HTML/CSS. Now it’s Tailwind and a bunch of React ninjas that see HTML as an implementation detail and CSS as fundamentally broken.

Between the various CSS-in-JS solutions and the use of massive UI frameworks— looking at you MUI— we have taken frontends that could be lightweight, fast-loading, and enjoyable and made them into monstrosities of slowness.

I was looking at a website for a development agency in Atlanta last night and my 8 year old laptop got so hot the fans had to spin up. The website wasn’t even doing much beyond showing some content with some simple animations. I could understand not being able to run the latest games on my laptop but content-centered websites shouldn’t be doing this.

When every new website on the internet has perfect, semantic, accessible HTML and exceptionally executed, accessible CSS that works on every device and browser, then you can tell me that these languages are not valuable on their own. Until then we need to stop devaluing CSS and HTML.

Mandy Michael

Preach! It’s all I see these days in job descriptions. JAVASCRIPT! Ninja preferred. Rockstar acceptable. And then they produce crap frontend code. Their HTML and CSS is restricted to Bootstrap at best, custom crap with style attributes all over the place at worst. When I was their age, the emphasis of frontend was on the other side of the triangle: HTML and CSS. Without these, your JavaScript means nothing. Even if you are embedding your CSS and HTML in your JavaScript. Shudder.

I was looking back over some of my older posts— I imported 8 years of history into Astro—, found, and rewatched this. Some great covers and history about Johnny Cash, who is one of my favorite artists.