Stan hates on the world, again.

The 16th century hits from Stan keep inexorably rolling out year after year, ad nauseum, without attention to the contradictions of scripture or logic. 

1. Stan, hating on the world: “as it turns out, humans are naturally hostile to God (Rom 8:7)”

St Paul, loving the world’s desire to know truth and meaning: 

“Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the market place every day with those who chanced to be there. Some also of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers met him. And some said, “What would this babbler say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he preached Jesus and the resurrection. And they took hold of him and brought him to the Are-op′agus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is which you present? For you bring some strange things to our ears; we wish to know therefore what these things mean.” Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.

So Paul, standing in the middle of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are VERY RELIGIOUS. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”

St Peter, being commanded by the Holy Spirit to overcome his refusal, becomes the witness of the first time the Holy Spirit comes into uncircumcised Gentiles, but Cornelius was a good man before that, “Cornelius, a centurion, an upright and God-fearing man, who is well spoken of by the whole Jewish nation, was directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house, and to hear what you have to say.”

But Stan is a fatalist not faithful. Faith is the hope in things unseen, right? But radical protestants aren't hopeful. So very often they are hateful. Principally because they do not lead their minds with faith but with 16th century dogma wrapped in the Modern Age ideology of White Supremacy. Or, more probably, vice versa. And, so, in a diverse, dynamic, marvelously sensual world - as a creation of god surely must be - their fatalism is fragile and their minds are stuck.

Humans are naturally hostile to god. Paul wrote that as the Jewish Jerusalem christians were being harassed by Jewish leaders of Israel - not god haters but defending their own faith while being occupied by a foreign power - and as the growing christian community in the cities of the near Roman Empire were also being harassed - again, by synagogue Jews in those cities. 

Eventually Christianity became so popular that Emperors set about killing them in various ways. And despite that, in three centuries Christianity became the official religion of the Empire and for 1700 years now is the dominant religion - and in many places the state religion -  throughout the continents of Europe and the Americas, Southern Africa, Ethiopia, South Sudan, South Korea and the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand. 

[Let me not mention the beautiful virtues of Buddhism, etc. Stan is light years from ecumenism much less interfaith brotherhood.]

Naturally hostile? Absolutely wrong. Fake fatalism of the fragile and angry.

2. More evidence of Stan’s fatalism, from his bunker of radical protestantism he reads where Paul and the Book of Revelation infers that god, “knew from the outset who would and who would not be saved.” 

As was true of his post the day before yesterday of God’s unchangingness, what is that to us? God knows the number of the hairs on my head. I’m not able to count them. I do know that god must be good at subtraction when he gets up every morning to count my hairs.

What’s our responsibility to God’s omniscience? Only to believe by faith so that we can calm our inchoate fears. To fear, to be anxious, to fake victimization as a christian is sin. Several times Jesus tells us not to be afraid. Do not fear.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.”

But fatalists want to judge. And people who want to judge weaponize scripture like Stan and his thuggish bedfellows do.

But what does scripture say? Do not judge. (Matthew7:1)

What does Paul say about scripture?

“The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach); because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved. The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches upon all who call upon him. For, “every one who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10)

Pretty damn hopefully. Nearly universal hope? Remember, it is here in Romans that Paul says Abraham was reckoned as righteous because he believed the promise of god and built his life accordingly. Took in all kinds of people and other families, etc.

And Abraham didn’t know Christ.

Paul goes on to write, “But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? And how can men preach unless they are sent?”

And then he quotes Isaiah: “I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.”

Hmmm. Pretty damn hopefully.

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Paul is someone on a mission to preach to everyone he finds and every place in the known world about the truth of the eternal love of god. Paul knows that this truth is the healing balm for personal sorrow and confusion as well as social and political hate, violence, and war.

Paul is like the psychologist spreading the news about the damages of corporeal punishment to developing children; Paul is like the sociologist warning us of the cascading destruction of segregation and sectarianism; Paul is like the environmentalist warning us of the unmissable cost in human lives and livelihood of industrially caused carbon emissions.

To know the truth and to love people is a holy calling to preach. And to self sacrifice.