Idiot Hopes and Idiot Despair
The world's way of responding to decay is to engage equally in idiot hopes and idiot despair.
On the one hand some new policy or discovery is confidently expected to put everything to rights: a new fuel, a new drug, détente, world government. On the other, some disaster is as confidently expected to prove our undoing. Capitalism will break down. Fuel will run out. Plutonium will lay us low. Atomic waste will kill us off. Overpopulation will suffocate us, or alternatively, a declining birth rate will put us more surely at the mercy of our enemies.
In Christian terms, such hopes and fears are equally beside the point. As Christians we know that in this world we have no continuing city, that crowns roll in the dust and that every earthly kingdom must sometime flounder. We acknowledge a King men did not crown and cannot dethrone, and we are citizens of a city of God they did not build and cannot destroy.
~Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990)
posted by BohemianLikeYOU at 3/11/2006 11:27:00 AM
8 Comments:
And now for a song about our true hope:
On Christ the Solid Rock
Edward Mote
William Bradbury
My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest frame
but wholly lean on Jesus' name
On Christ the solid rock I stand
all other ground is sinking sand
all other ground is sinking sand
When darkness veils his lovely face
I rest on his unchanging grace
In every high and stormy gale
my anchor holds within the veil
On Christ the solid rock I stand
all other ground is sinking sand
all other ground is sinking sand
His oath, his covenant his blood
support me in the whelming flood
when all around my soul gives way
he then is all my hope and stay
On Christ the solid rock I stand
all other ground is sinking sand
all other ground is sinking sand
When he shall come with trumpet sound
O may I then in him be found
Dressed in his righteousness alone
Faultless to stand before the throne
On Christ the solid rock I stand
all other ground is sinking sand
all other ground is sinking sand
On Christ the solid rock I stand
all other ground is sinking sand
all other ground is sinking sand
Well said Mr. Whitman.
Thanks for your comment, Ryan. I do see your point, but I've always considered Mugg's skewering of modern zeitgeist to be ultimately optimistic as it points out how utterly foolish secular humanism is.
Few do it better than him. He's sort of a believer's H.L. Mencken.
I need to read more Kirk. Thanks for reminding me of this.
Cheers!
[Since Communism is gone, we need a new bogie-man -- Islam is it.]
Robertson Finds Radical Muslims 'Satanic'
By SONJA BARISIC
Associated Press Writer
NORFOLK, Va.
Television evangelist Pat Robertson said Monday on his live news-and- talk program "The 700 Club" that Islam is not a religion of peace, and that radical Muslims are "satanic."
Robertson's comments came after he watched a news story on his Christian Broadcasting Network about Muslim protests in Europe over the cartoon drawings of the Prophet Muhammad.
He remarked that the outpouring of rage elicited by cartoons "just shows the kind of people we're dealing with. These people are crazed fanatics, and I want to say it now: I believe it's motivated by demonic power. It is satanic and it's time we recognize what we're dealing with."
Robertson also said that "the goal of Islam, ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not, is world domination."
thats unbelievable. Pat Robertson's not always wrong?
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist.
~Charles Baudelaire
"The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today
Is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips
Then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle.
That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable." -DC Talk, What if I stumble
People see Christian's like Pat Robertson with his wacky comments and are happy to make him out to be the spokesperson for Christianity because it reinforces their preconcieved opinions of Christianity. I too believe that the muslim reaction to the cartoons is ungodly and sinful, and I don't think it is wrong to call out a people claiming to follow God when they obviously don't. Perhaps he just says it in a way that is disagreeable and over the top. If they say it is a religion of peace and then don't act that way should we not call them hypocrites? If it were Christians, would the world not judge them as such? But we digress, we were originially speaking of hope. And there is but one hope. And if Christ has not risen from the dead, if what I believe is not true, then we (christians) are amongst all people to be pitied. I now leave you with words from a band called "Pearl Merchant"
Calling
deep inside my cave, I thought I'd hidden from your sight
stealing with me feasts and treasure, hiding from the light
all that time, couldn't see, though the world lay before me
want the world, want the girl, want the very thing I hate
all that time, wouldn't see your beauty
to the blind, let us sing of his beauty
to the poor, let his treasure be found
let the good news erase all the memories of dark days
and parched lips be filled with his praise
there's a way that seems so right, but in the end it leads...
rising from my table was a great trough filled with feed
carrion, swarmed with flies, vinegar I'd drunk as wine
rusted coins, fading sighs, then a still small voice outside
all this time, I can see you wanted so much more from me
now I hear, the song is near, calling me out, calling me out
son of God, walk in light, no longer slave in dungeon hide
Son of God, burning bright, calling me out, calling me out
wide my eyes, coming clear, I want to see.
Ronald Reagan was a corrupt, amoral, low-minded elitist. He was also a stupid idiot. Just ask Margaret Thatcher, EVEN she thought so!
Thanks Ronnie, for ruining your country to fatten the bank accounts of your special friends. Thanks for all the ruined lives you left in your wake. Thanks for bringing the world's hatred onto the United States.
Thanks for the debt and your pathetic, childish "witticisms".
Rot in hell, Ronnie, you callous idiot.
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