Christmas is upon us.<\/p>\n
Every year for quite some time now conservatives have gone on about the left\u2019s \u201cwar\u201d on Christmas.\u00a0 This year is no exception.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, more so than at any other time in our past, and courtesy of the recent rise of Faucianity, it is in 2020, under the pretext of combatting \u201cThe Virus,\u201d that Christianity\u2019s enemies have come closer than they ever have before to cancelling Christmas.<\/p>\n
Still, one would think that Christmas would be the least offensive of holidays to the anti-Christs, for the dominant Christ-image associated with Christmas is that of the Babe in the manger.\u00a0 In other words, it is this<\/em> image of Jesus more so than that of any other that seems to have been all but designed to assuage and even bolster the sensibilities of our Politically Correct Age.<\/p>\n The Baby qua<\/em> baby, like all babies, is innocent, non-threatening, without judgment, and, well, babyish<\/em>.<\/p>\n Babies are also the neediest, the weakest, and the most vulnerable among those this side of their mothers\u2019 wombs.\u00a0 The satisfaction of their physical needs is contingent upon the attention of those wiser and stronger than themselves.\u00a0 So too, though, do babies exist to be controlled by those with more power and authority, but power and authority that is only supposed to be utilized for the purpose of protecting children, both from the harm of others as well as the harm that they can visit upon themselves.<\/p>\n Whether it is courtesy of Nature or God, babies, children, are ordained to live under paternalistic<\/em>\u2014or maternalistic<\/em>\u2014rule.<\/p>\n If only they didn\u2019t despise Christ so, how much more mileage could the left get from imploring America\u2019s Christians to be more like the Christ-Child<\/em>!<\/p>\n The real tragedy is that American Christians in 2020 don\u2019t need for anyone to tell them this.\u00a0 The leaders and laity of the contemporary American Church of both the Protestant and Catholic varieties long ago opted to anchor their faith in a child-friendly conception of the God-Man<\/em> who they purport to worship.<\/p>\n The Jesus who is overwhelmingly preached from pulpits today is Jesus Meek and Mild, a harmless Jesus who judges no one, never so much as raises his voice, to say nothing of issuing condemnations, and who preaches, not love, but a hippy-dippy lovie-doviness that couldn\u2019t discriminate between good and evil if it had an eternity to do so.<\/p>\n This Jesus, you see, isn\u2019t merely in<\/em> the world; he is of<\/em> it.\u00a0 More specifically, he is of our world, <\/em>the world as 21st<\/sup> liberal democrats (small \u201cl\u201d and small \u201cd\u201d) tend to conceive it.<\/p>\n In other words, the Jesus that far too many Christians and their secular counterparts alike prefer is most emphatically not <\/em>the real Jesus. <\/em><\/p>\n This Christmas Season comes on the heels of a year unlike that of any other.\u00a0 It is the year that, under the pretext of combatting a corona cold virus with a survival rate of 99.9%, power-obsessed politicians and career bureaucrats and their ratings-obsessed propagandists in the media gave new meaning to the term \u201cfear-mongering\u201d as they brainwashed millions of weak-minded and fear-ridden Americans into contributing to the economic, psychological, and social subversion of their own country.<\/p>\n It is the year that these same self-interested actors not only legitimized, but encouraged Black Lives Matter riots in hundreds of cities throughout the United States.<\/p>\n And it is the year that ended with a stolen presidential election, followed by more hyper-sensationalistic fear-mongering over an alleged explosion of new virus \u201ccases\u201d (a notoriously unreliable, even meaningless, benchmark).<\/p>\n 2020 has been a year of lies, the Year of the Lie<\/em>.\u00a0 That being the case, this Christmas, as we foster within ourselves a hope, a militant, indomitable, warrior\u2019s hope in the Spirit of the Season for a better year ahead, let us reflect on Truth, on the Truth that was born to the Virgin in the manger. Let us remember that the Babe who lay in swaddling clothes and before whom kings and shepherds knelt is a Warrior<\/em>-Christ, the same Person whose revulsion of evil and the wicked<\/em> is such that the accounts of His violent retribution against it are offered consistently throughout the pages of Sacred Scripture from the book of Genesis to that of Revelation.<\/p>\n Jesus, the Word of God, God the Son eternally begotten from the Father, is anything but the pacifist that He is all too often made out to be.\u00a0 He is no pacifist at all. He is a Warrior-Christ. Moreover, when He wages war, He tends to go scorched Earth.\u00a0 He goes big.<\/p>\n The same Babe in the manger flooded the planet, insuring the destruction of, outside of Noah and company, all other men, women, children, and animals.<\/p>\n The God who, on multiple occasions, either directly annihilated all of the living inhabitants of whole tribes and cities or commanded Israelites to do the same is the God who assumed flesh as Baby Jesus.<\/p>\n The God who saw to it that His chosen people would prevail in battle over their enemies\u2014who were His<\/em> enemies\u2014is the same God who would lay in a bed of straw outside of the inn.<\/p>\n This is also the same God who would bless warriors, like King David, regarding the latter as \u201ca man after my own heart.\u201d<\/p>\n And when God became incarnate as the Man of all men and proceeded to embark upon His ministry, He showed, not merely impatience, but the same contempt for the haughty and dishonest that He exhibited in His pre-incarnate state.\u00a0 Among other things, when Christ wasn\u2019t cleansing the Temple, overturning their tables and driving out the merchants and their livestock with a whip, He continued to unload upon His enemies, the religious-political elites of the day, the same fiery, unstoppable indignation as He blasted, not their ideas, but their very persons as spiritually and morally twisted \u201cwhite-washed tombs\u201d who were destined for agonizing punishment, \u201cwailing and gnashing of teeth\u201d\u2014a fate that He, <\/em>their accuser, would visit upon them.<\/p>\n The Baby whose birth we celebrate on this most blessed of holy days would grow up to command His disciples to arm themselves with swords, and when the Roman governor, a man known for his ruthlessness, reminded Jesus that it was up to him whether Jesus would live or die, Christ, without batting an eye, flipped Pilate\u2019s script and set him straight, informing him <\/em>that the only power that Pilate possessed is the power that Christ permitted him to have.<\/p>\n Nor should we ever forget\u2014as all too many Christians today would prefer to forget\u2014that the Christ-Child is the same Person who \u201cthe disciple that he loved most\u201d assures us will return one day to separate the wheat from the chaff and slay<\/em> His enemies.<\/p>\n Doubtless, these are not the images and thoughts that we are accustomed to dwelling upon during the twelve days of the Mass of Christ (or at any other time).\u00a0 Yet dwell upon them we should, for far from being incompatible with the God of Love, they rather underscore it; they underscore that God is<\/em> Good. God is Love and God is Good because God despises evil and its purveyors.<\/p>\n He came into the world to reconcile it to Himself.\u00a0 However, knowing that human beings, those of His creations that He made in His likeness, i.e. with reason and freedom of the will<\/em>, would always have among them those who would exercise their freedom to reject God\u2019s offer of adoption as children, God knows that unless goodness has power\u2014less euphemistically, violence<\/em>\u2014in its in its defense against evil, evil will prevail.<\/p>\n While I\u2019m not as enamored of Jordan Peterson as some, he deserves all of the credit in the world for having captured a profound truth with a concision and a clarity that few others have achieved.\u00a0 During an exchange with former Navy Seal and martial artist Jocko Willink on the latter\u2019s podcast, Peterson remarked:<\/p>\n \u201cA good<\/em> man must <\/em>be a dangerous<\/em> man.\u201d<\/p>\n This is an insight that remains lost upon far too many contemporary Christians (and conservatives).\u00a0 Thus, this Christmas, let us, Christians generally and Christian men specifically, begin to dwell upon the Lord as He is, and not as we and our secular liberal democratic culture would like for Him to be.<\/p>\n Let us, paraphrasing Peterson, begin the work of searing into our consciences the following glorious, blessed Truth:<\/p>\n \u201cJesus, the God-Man, the best<\/em> of men, is, and can only be, the most<\/em> dangerous of men.\u201d<\/p>\n As we seek to become better Christians, let us do as Jesus would do and aspire to become the good men, and good women, who He wants for us to become.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Christmas is upon us. Every year for quite some time now conservatives have gone on about the left\u2019s \u201cwar\u201d on Christmas.\u00a0 This year is no exception. Admittedly, more so than at any other time in our past, and courtesy of the recent rise of Faucianity, it is in 2020, under the pretext of combatting \u201cThe…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n