YOU ‘MUST BE MADE’ TO OBEY
by MATT BARBER
While actions speak louder than words, words often predict future actions. Secular progressives’ words and actions rarely align. This is because the pseudo-utopian, wholly dystopian perch from which they view the world is so detached from reality that, from a cultural and public policy standpoint, they must disguise their intended actions in flowery and euphemistic language, or face near universal rejection.
When they don’t like the terms, liberals redefine the terms to mean something they do not, never have and never can mean. Consider, for instance, the once meaningful words “marriage” and “equality.”
Other “progressive” doublespeak includes words like “invest” (meaning socialist redistribution of wealth), “tolerance” (meaning embrace immorality or face total ruin), “diversity” (meaning Christians and conservatives need not apply), “hate” (meaning truth) or “The Affordable Care Act” (meaning unaffordable, unsustainable and utterly inferior socialized medicine).
Even so, it’s during those rare moments of candor that our cultural Marxist friends’ rhetoric actually aligns with their intended actions. In other words, every so often, and usually by accident, they tell the truth.
Take this recent declaration by President Obama at Georgetown University. He was discussing his contempt for conservative new media in general and Fox News in particular:
“[W]e’re going to have to change how our body politic thinks, which means we’re going to have to change how the media reports on these issues,” he said.
How Kim Jong-un of him. In sum: Goal 1) Control thought by, Goal 2) Controlling the media.
This is an idea older than – and as well preserved as – Vladimir Lenin himself. How Dear Leader intends to reconcile his scheme to “change how the media reports on these issues” with the First Amendment’s Free Press Clause, namely, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom … of the press,” is abundantly clear.
He doesn’t.
Our emperor-in-chief will force feed his once-free subjects yet another unconstitutional executive decree – a Net Neutrality sandwich with a side of Fairness Doctrine.
Or take would-be President Hillary Clinton’s comments last month on the “rite” of abortion vs. the right of religious freedom.
“The comment has Hillary Clinton essentially saying that Christians must be forced to change their religious views to accommodate abortions.
“‘Far too many women are still denied critical access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth. All the laws we've passed don’t count for much if they’re not enforced,’ Clinton said, using the euphemism for abortion.
“‘Rights have to exist in practice – not just on paper,’ Clinton argued. ‘Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.’”
That’s a lot of “have tos.” See the pattern here? Whether it’s Obama saying government will “have to change how the media reports,” or Hillary saying “deep-seated religious beliefs have to be changed,” such despotic demands should spike the neck hair of every freedom-loving American.
And then there are those left-wing extremists whose designs on despotism require that Christians “must be made” to obey. Homosexual practitioner and New York Times columnist Frank Bruni is one such extremist. In his April 3 column titled, “Bigotry: The Bible and the Lessons of Indiana,” Bruni quotes homosexual militant Mitchell Gold, a prominent anti-Christian activist: “Gold told me that church leaders must be made ‘to take homosexuality off the sin list,’” he writes. “His commandment is worthy – and warranted,” he adds.
Of course, if homosexual behavior, something denounced as both “vile affections” and “an abomination” throughout both the Old and New Testaments, is no longer sexual sin, then there can be no sexual sin whatsoever. To coerce, through the power of the police state, faithful Christians to abandon the millennia-old biblical sexual ethic and embrace the sin of Sodom would likewise require that Christians sign-off on fornication, adultery, incest and bestiality. Such is the unnatural nature of government-mandated moral relativism.
“But this isn't free speech, it’s hate speech!” come the mournful cries of the ill-informed and the ill-prepared, desperately afraid to debate the issues on the merits. “Hate speech is excluded from protection,” opines CNN anchor Chris Cuomo in a recent tweet on the topic. “But there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment,” replies UCLA law professor Eugene Volohk in a Washington Post op-ed. “Hateful ideas (whatever exactly that might mean) are just as protected under the First Amendment as other ideas.”
Of course this matters not to those to whom the First Amendment is meaningless.
Indeed, one man’s “hate speech” is another man’s truth, and as I’ve often said, truth is hate to those who hate truth.
And boy do they hate it.
And so they mean to muzzle it.
The time of which many of us have long warned is no longer on the horizon. The left’s full-on assault against freedom, most especially religious freedom, is at hand. Oddly, or maybe not so oddly, it’s at once the secular left and orthodox Muslims who lead the charge. These strange bedfellows share a common enemy. He is Truth in the person of Jesus Christ. In order to silence Him, they must silence His faithful followers.
Which brings us to this modern age of American lawlessness. We’re fast moving from a soft tyranny to hard tyranny, and “progressive” leaders like those mentioned above are, chillingly enough, emboldened to the degree that they will openly call for it.
Like our brothers and sisters around the world, American Christians must prepare for suffering.
But, like them, we mustn't despair.
For there are different kinds of suffering.
Suffering through cancer, for instance, can, and often does, lead to death. Without Christ, who is mankind’s only hope, such suffering is hopeless indeed.
Yet when a young mother suffers through child birth, and while she may experience the same level of pain as the cancer sufferer, her crying out elicits an entirely different response, and her pain serves an entirely different purpose. While one type of suffering leads to death, the other leads to life. While one attends sorrow, the other attends joy.
Similarly, there is a kind of suffering, suffering in sin, which leads to spiritual death, and a kind suffering, suffering in grace, which leads to spiritual life. Anti-Christian persecution, be it efforts to force Christians into disobedience to God, attempts to silence them outright or, worse, the torture, enslavement and even execution of Christ followers – now widespread in both Muslim and Marxist nations across the globe – signifies “the beginning of birth pains” (see Matthew 24:8).
And birth pains lead to new life.
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