{"id":7748,"date":"2009-01-09T09:52:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-09T09:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2009\/01\/7748\/"},"modified":"2015-01-01T15:26:38","modified_gmt":"2015-01-01T22:26:38","slug":"7748","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2009\/01\/7748.html","title":{"rendered":""},"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><strong>It\u2019s a Weird Day When Time Magazine Sound like Mark Steyn<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u2026but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.time.com\/time\/world\/article\/0,8599,1870314-1,00.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">this article <\/a>basically makes the same point that he has been making.  It happens to focus on Israel, but it\u2019s just as true of the West.<\/p>\n<p>We are basically a hedonist society that has forgotten God and is slowly aborting and consuming itself out of existence. The threat of Islam to the West is like the threat of parasitic disease to a patient who has destroyed his immune system through the various self-indulgences our culture affords.  In short, the West is not being murdered: it\u2019s committing suicide.<\/p>\n<p>And, like all deeply selfish technocrats, the West is not asking itself, \u201cHow do I repent and get right with God?\u201d  It is asking, \u201cHow can I maintain my present levels of self-indulgence and, when I encounter threats to it, use technology to crush them so as to stave off the need to change?\u201d  Presently, the principle threat being crushed is \u201cbabies\u201d.  But other threats exist as well, and some of them shoot back.  But ultimately, it\u2019s a fool\u2019s errand.  Israel, like the rest of the West, wants to be a hedonist culture of abortion.  They will, therefore, find themselves overwhelmed by demographics when their neighbors outnumber them.  At that point, they can be a Jewish state or a democracy, but not both.  And as they go, so shall go the rest of the West if we do not return to something like our Christian heritage.  Supernature abhors a vaccum and if Christians (or in Israel\u2019s case Jews) are too timid or in love the world to have, you know, <em>children <\/em>then the West will become Muslim.<\/p>\n<p>The thing is, children are an expression of hope and hope comes ultimately from God.  A pagan civilization can move forward in the hope of finding God.  A Christian civilization can live in the hope of heaven.  A believing Jews hopes for the Messiah.  But a post-Christian (or post-Jewish) secular culture rejects hope as it rejects God.  And when you reject hope, you stop having kids and start having fun to distract you from your existential despair.  Israel, being a secular Western democracy, is drinking from the same well, having given up on messianic hope largely and having placed more and more of its faith in the same false gods that occupy the thoughts of chattering classes in New York, LA, DC, London and Paris.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Babies, chum: tiny, dimpled, fleshy mirrors of our us-ness, that we parents hurl into the future, like leathery footballs of hope. And you\u2019ve got to get a good spiral on that baby, or evil will make an interception. \u2013 The Tick<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s a Weird Day When Time Magazine Sound like Mark Steyn \u2026but this article basically makes the same point that he has been making. It happens to focus on Israel, but it\u2019s just as true of the West. We are basically a hedonist society that has forgotten God and is slowly aborting and consuming itself [&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":[],"class_list":["post-7748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Catholic and Enjoying It!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It&#039;s a Weird Day When Time Magazine Sound like Mark Steyn...but this article basically makes the same point that he has been making. It happens to focus\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2009\/01\/7748.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It&#039;s a Weird Day When Time Magazine Sound like Mark Steyn...but this article basically makes the same point that he has been making. It happens to focus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2009\/01\/7748.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Catholic and Enjoying It!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-01-09T09:52:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-01-01T22:26:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/3469526-4216527387956045056?l=markshea.blogspot.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Shea\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mark Shea\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2009\/01\/7748.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2009\/01\/7748.html\",\"name\":\"\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2009-01-09T09:52:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-01-01T22:26:38+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/c1a9ac1e557d3c626974fd6692818ad5\"},\"description\":\"It's a Weird Day When Time Magazine Sound like Mark Steyn...but this article basically makes the same point that he has been making. 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