You Know Neither The Scriptures Nor The Power Of God

I enjoy Helen Pluckrose on Twitter, and have been slowly going through Cynical Theories, but I don’t think this tweet is going to age well:

https://twitter.com/HPluckrose/status/1371519590577139713?s=20

Followed by this one:

https://twitter.com/HPluckrose/status/1371521182898520064?s=20

To quote myself from yesterday, “You’re borrowing from God, you should give it back.” The very idea of “moral authority” and even “love,” for that matter, did not just fall as a gentle rain from heaven into the minds of human people without being given to them by someone far far far greater than Dr. Pluckrose, who, as I said, is still an excellent follow on Twitter.

What I like best is that, of course, the Catholic Church is well aware that same-sex desire, as well as couples, have existed for a very long time. Indeed, many people–most especially the Pope…who, I need hardly mention, is Catholic–know whereof the Church derives, how it did not just spring, unbidden, into some random person’s mind, but came out of an even older, quite ancient Faith that has many things to say not only about what people think and feel, but about how they should live and order their lives. One way to know that Christianity was given by God to the world–that special gift that literally no one wanted and could never have been invented by humanity–is that it cuts against the person. It tells the person that she is wrong, and can only be saved by divine and miraculous help. No other religion tells people that they are so deeply in trouble that they can do nothing to help themselves, but that God will help them because, even though they don’t love him, he does them, and literally died on purpose to get them back for himself.

Likewise, this announcement by the Catholic church isn’t a “decision,” or at least I hope it isn’t, as much as continuing to say and believe what the Church has always said and believed. The decision is to follow Jesus, not try to sort out what will make the church relevant, or if its morality is “lagging behind the general population” which has not, and continues to not impress people who think deeply about morality and, dare I say it, holiness.

The lections this morning, as they go by, include lines like this: “You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice,” and this “…you shall not oppress a sojourner” and this, “…pay attention to all that I have said to you, and make no mention of the names of other gods…” and then you can skip over to the New Testament where Jesus lovingly explains to his pharisaical interlocutors, “You are wrong because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God…”

What I like best, though, is the idea that secularists could take the idea of “commitments,” steal that idea really, and then use it to their own ends, as if God taking the world into his bosom–that most alien and strange of sojourners who never wanted to be with him–and forbearing with it for one generation after another, even though it rejects and abhors everything he loves and says.

And now, if you will excuse me, I’m going to go do something useful, like repent of all my sins, and all my Twitter scrolling, if those two things are not completely synonymous with each other.