{"id":102909,"date":"2018-03-26T00:41:01","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T07:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=102909"},"modified":"2018-03-21T22:56:45","modified_gmt":"2018-03-22T05:56:45","slug":"against-martian-paganism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/03\/against-martian-paganism.html","title":{"rendered":"Monday Meditation for Holy Week: Against Martian Paganism"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>This is a lie:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net\/v\/t1.0-9\/29388451_1718265361589796_499726845122593034_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&amp;oh=4dceebe1b7bb7a115df5a646016b18ed&amp;oe=5B314137\" alt=\"Image may contain: one or more people and text\"><\/p>\n<p>Back in the day, Christians stated clearly that that God created man to know him, love him, and serve him in this life and to be eternally happy with him in the next.<\/p>\n<p>Back when Christians were formed by the tradition and not by FOX news and the Federalist, war was a consequence of the Fall, not something God created and not something humans were created for. To be sure, sometimes it is necessary to fight, but war is not a good any more than amputation is a good.\u00a0 We are not made for it.\u00a0 We are made in spite of it.<\/p>\n<p>But with the rise of Mars-worship on the Freak Show Right, war and killing are viewed, not as things we sometimes tragically <em>have<\/em> to do, but as things we <em>get<\/em> to do:\u00a0 as things we are created to do, part of our essence.<\/p>\n<p>And meanwhile, as these propagandists who write this filth gin up men to believe their manhood is achieved by killing, the men who prepare to send them to kill are cowards like Trump and the other oligarchs who send men to die in wars for profit and then leave them homeless on the street and killing themselves at a rate of 22 a day.<\/p>\n<p>Tolkien, who was ten times the man these Mars worshippers will ever be, had a far clearer understanding of war when he had Faramir say, \u201cI do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Fall is not Creation. Sin is not what makes us human. Sin is what destroys our humanity and war is a side effect of sin.<\/p>\n<p>It was an ass, not a war horse, the greatest warrior who ever lived rode into Jerusalem yesterday. He fought with the weapons of the Spirit. Christians do likewise:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I, Paul, myself entreat you, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ\u2014I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold to you when I am away! I beg of you that when I am present I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of acting in worldly fashion. For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. (2 Co 10:1\u20134).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a lie: Back in the day, Christians stated clearly that that God created man to know him, love him, and serve him in this life and to be eternally happy with him in the next. Back when Christians were formed by the tradition and not by FOX news and the Federalist, war was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1014],"class_list":["post-102909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-meditations-for-holy-week"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Monday Meditation for Holy Week: Against Martian Paganism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This is a lie: Back in the day, Christians stated clearly that that God created man to know him, love him, and serve him in this life and to be eternally\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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