Truth be told Donald Trump is a mentally unstable, morally unprincipled man who can’t be trusted with the highest seat of power. Voting for someone I wouldn’t trust around my own mother seems absurd. The hypocrisy of many in the “moral majority” who have always told us “character matters most” (but this time is doesn’t) is stunning.
On the other hand Hillary is a dishonest, unprincipled woman who for years has been the chief concealer and enabler of her husband’s predatory advances towards women in order to insulate her own political ambitions. She considers herself the uncompromising protector of women’s rights, but has bear-hugged millions of dollars given to her from the most brutal and repressive regimes on earth that systematically run roughshod over the rights of their female citizenry. Her hypocrisy and that of the media knows no bounds. If you don’t think so you need to get your head out of the sand. Neither one should have gotten this far. But the following isn’t about their unfitness to serve because neither one gets my vote.
Rather I want to comment on the hypocrisy that has gotten us this far. The hypocrisy on the right is self-evident and obvious. Trump’s emotional maturity and integrity doesn’t pass the smell test and we all know it. The skeletons in his closet could probably fill a graveyard and evangelical Christians should not be caught trying to “bleach” all those bones (i.e. “he just says stupid things… I’m sure he never means anything by it”). If Trump wins, he wins. But let him do it without our white-washing enablement. There is more at stake than Supreme Court justices. America is not the Kingdom of God. Never was. Never will be. Get that straight and loving your enemy and a host of other counter-intuitive statements of Christ will begin to make more sense.
Now what about the left? I think the hypocrisy on the left is much more nuanced and subtle. But it is also what makes it more dangerous, for what is more subtle is by nature less detectable until it manifests itself as irreversible and terminal—like advanced cancer. For years the left, liberal progressive element of our society has been slipping further and further into subtle hypocrisy. But given their recent reaction of shock and horror over Trump’s lewd remarks towards women, it appears their hypocrisy is now in total free-fall. For in fact Trump is the left—at least on this issue. His objectification of women as titillating sources of personal amusement and entertainment mirrors the commercial degradation of women that has been going on for years. That the left is blind to this truth only goes to show how hypocrisy eventually leads to cataracts in the soul.
For decades Hollywood has churned out hundreds if not thousands of films that objectify women and reduce them down to their sexual parts. Yet Hollywood is 90% left wing—not even close to the center. Similarly the liberal, progressive music industry has made billions on lyrics and videos that not only sexualize women, but assault their feminine dignity in a manner that would have made the blood of our parent’s generation run cold. It’s art they say. No it’s sex. And sex sells. We are whoring ourselves in pursuit of the almighty dollar—and losing our kids in the process. Videos that were considered risqué and racy in the 80’s would now be considered prudish and boring—almost wholesome—compared to the pornographic seduction and obscenity laced smut that masquerades as musical entertainment today.
But whenever the charge is made on the right that the movie and music industry has gone too far and they need to reign in the smutty garbage they daily pump into our societal consciousness, it is often the left-wing feminists who run to their defense and say showing prolific, uninhibited fornication, grinding multiple men and fingering oneself before a T.V. audience isn’t degrading at all. It isn’t? Nope. We are told it is a healthy means for feminist expression that empowers younger women to be proud of their bodies and take back control of their sexuality from men. Sounds great. Doesn’t work. It’s a pile of steamy you-know-what. In fact it plays right into the playbook of the Donald Trumps and Bill Clinton’s of this world who drool all over that sort of feminine “empowerment.”
Let’s not be so naïve. They and their kind bankroll it! Moreover it makes it even more difficult for our sisters, mothers and daughters to empower themselves in ways outside of sex appeal.
More astonishing is that Barack Obama has praised the some of the worst misogynist rappers like Jay-Z and Ludacris, going so far as to say hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and the rappers Jay-Z and Ludacris were “great talents and great businessmen”. Never mind that their lyrics often boast about sexual violence and assault against women. Though Obama has voiced he is sometimes “troubled” by their lyrics he nonetheless feels this does not change the fact that they are great talents whose business acumen should be praised. How naive can one be? In the industry of rap, lyrics and business are joined at the hip! No one is rapping about “Mary had a little lamb.” Furthermore Obama apparently has zero qualms boasting about listening to Eminem whose routine lyrical violence against women knows no bounds. Here is just a taste of the lyrical “artists” who have found a place on our President’s i-pod or whom he has personally invited to the White House, like Snoop Dog and Jaz-Z who routinely rap explicitly about sexual assualt.
- Eminem “The Real Slim Shady” – Jaws all on the floor, like Pam, like Tommy just burst in the door and started whoopin her ass worse then before.
- Eminem “Superman” – Don’t put out, I’ll put you out, won’t get out, I’ll push you out. There goes another lawsuit, leave handprints all across you. Put anthrax on a tampax, and slap you till you can’t stand.
- Eminem “Love the Way You Lie” – You push, pull each other’s hair, scratch, claw, hit ‘em. Throw ‘em down, pin ‘em. Im’a tie her to the bed and set this house on fire.”
- Ludacris “Southern Hospitality” – Lie through your teeth you could find your mouth, cold and rip out ya tongue cause of what ya mouth, told.
- Lucacris and Mystikal “Move Bitch” – “I’ma ‘bout to punch yo…lights out”
- Ludacris, Usher, Lil Jon “Lovers and Friends” “Be a good girl now, turn around, and get these whippings. You know you like it like that, you don’t have to fight back, Here’s a pillow bite . . . that.
- Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre “The Next Episode” – And if yo’ ass get cracked, bitch shut yo’ trap.”
- Jay-Z and UGK’s “Big Pimpin” – You know I thug em, fuck em, love em, leave em. Cause I don’t fuckin need em. In the cut where I keep em til I need a nut, til I need to beat the guts.
The manner in which misogyny and sexual assault can masquerade as art, and the perpetrators of such “art” be praised by our President as men with gifted talent and business acumen is utterly deplorable and indefensible.
And how both Barack and Michelle Obama can say “Beyoncé could not be a better role model for my girls because she carries herself with such class and poise” is beyond me! It is perhaps the greatest evidence that the collective cataracts of our nation’s soul have brought about an irreversible blindness of desensitization.
After all we all talking about the same Beyoncé who wears the raciest of outfits and routinely laces hers lyrics with the raunchiest of sexual prose–all in the name of female empowerment of course. Note the following empowering speech for Obama’s young girls to follow:
“Who the fuck do you think I is? You ain’t married to no average bitch boy. You can watch my fat ass twist boy. As I bounce to the next dick boy.” (-Beyonce Lemonade)
Or how about this one:
“Oh he so horny, yea he want to fuck. He popped all my buttons, he ripped my blouse, he Monica Lewinski all on my gown.” -(Beyonce Partition)
Lastly the hypocrisy of the left is most profound in how left-wing feminists systematically attack and vilify women on the right who don’t act like them, talk like them or believe like them. Stay home and raise your kids? You’re a sellout. Advocate the wisdom and value of abstinence before marriage? You’re a puritan shrew. Suggest more modest clothing? You’re a prude. Say you are pro-life? You must be against women despite being one. You’re a female Republican? You deserve to be made fun, called a cunt and vilified on SNL.
For left-wing feminists, it isn’t enough to just be a woman. No—one must be a left-leaning feminist if their femininity is to count.
The left-wing feminist movement use to be just that—a movement—and a much needed one in our society. But today—at least in the US—it is largely a specialized club membership with an entrenched, narrow-minded ideology that stifles and controls the independent thinking of women. I once read somewhere that the feminism of today acts like a credit card. It doesn’t exist to really help women anymore than a credit card exists to help you save and preserve your hard earned income. Sure it may come to your aid from time to time and help you get out of a bind, but their real interest is their shareholders.
Feminism today exists to serve their left-wing shareholders not the general female consumer. And Hillary Clinton is the highest paid shareholder there is.
Just so we know.
-StriderMTB
1 John 5:10-11 The Death Knell of Calvinism
THE ARGUMENT PRESENTED: When looked at objectively it is clear John’s statements are strongly implying God’s testimony is a witness of divine truth genuinely meant for every person, but the person who refuses to believe in God’s testimony is essentially calling God a liar because “they have not believed the testimony” of what God has done for him and given to them (i.e. the testimony God gave to them about his Son and eternal found in his Son– vs. 10).
What exactly is the testimony of what God has given to men— even the person who refuses to believe? John is quite clear. “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son” (vs.11).
Since John specifically includes unbelievers as recipients of God’s testimony, John’s use of the word “us” in this passage cannot be restricted to the elect.
How do we know this?
Because John declares that the one who does not believe in God’s testimony is calling God “a liar.” This is crucial to see.
As mentioned in verse 10, the unbeliever is calling God a liar, in that he or she refuses to believe in God’s testimony, namely, that which “God has given about His Son” (vs.10). If this were not so, we are left with the absurd notion that John is condemning unbelievers for calling God a liar because they refuse to believe God gave His Son to only the elect.
This just wont do. It is clear John is condemning unbelievers for calling God a liar, but not because they refuse to believe God’s testimony is for some select elect. Rather it is because they refuse to believe God gave His Son and the gift of eternal life to them.
John’s argument in 1 John 5:10-11 is essentially a further development of his words in John 3:16-17. God “gave” His one and only Son to the world that He “so loved.” Those that reject the Son given are condemned, But those that receive the given Son receive eternal life found in the Son. To have one is to have the other. Hence “whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Believing is certainly at issue– but people are never condemned for not believing Christ died for others, but for them! Repeatedly the scriptures teach that people are condemned on the basis of rejecting the Son of God given to them— not for rejecting that the Son of God has been given exclusively to elect Christians. Never once does do the scriptures even suggest such a bizarre, outlandish concept.
John’s point is that God has not given the unbeliever nothing, but something— the very testimony of His Son (birth, death and resurrection) and eternal life. To refuse to believe this is to call God a liar, and to call God a liar is to forfeit the Son, and to forfeit the Son is to forfeit the eternal found in the Son.
For in the following verse John declares in unequivocal terms, “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12). Who is the person who does not have the Son? Obviously it is the person who has “made God a liar because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given of His Son”(vs. 10) [HSBC].
To summarize then, these verses put into serious jeopardy any Calvinist notion that suggests God limited and restricted the scope of His redemptive intention and redemptive love to only an unconditionally elect few. The unbeliever could never call God a liar if it were true that the testimony (Christ and eternal life found in Christ) was not given or intended for him.
But, as John says, the testimony of the giving of the Son and eternal life is true and when the unbeliever refuses to believe this, it is on that basis the unbeliever is calling God a liar and stands condemned— “because they have not believed the testimony that God has given about His Son”(vs.10). It bears repeating: John is condemning unbelievers for calling God a liar in that they refuse to believe God gave His Son and eternal life for them.
RESPONDING TO THE CALVINIST REBUTTAL: The above explanation by a Calvinist is the typical escape hatch by which all Calvinists seek to evade and circumvent any scripture passage that makes God appear too charitable and intentional in His redemptive love for all people. For many Calvinists any suggestion of God being omni-benevolent in redemption is almost treated as a theological cardinal “sin” that must be denounced in the strongest terms possible.
Be that as it may 1 John 5:10-11 simply won’t bend to their wishes. If nothing else the text is a clear refutation of the Calvinist theology of limited, particular atonement and the constrictive manacles they impose upon God’s saving intention. For centuries Calvinist theology has insisted that the un-elect are outside the redemptive orbit of “the world that God so loved that He gave His only begotten Son,” and therefore the Son’s work on the cross was never truly given to them in any tangible, divinely intended manner.
But if John is saying anything worth noting, he is saying that the Son (and eternal life found in the Son) has been given— tangibly given to all persons— and a denial of this is to call God a liar.
Shocking as it may be Calvinists are at the forefront of slandering the witness of God since they insist that multitudes of people are outside the orbit of God’s redemptive love and saving intentions through the giving of His Son.
SERIOUS QUESTIONS: Two reflective questions bear out why the standard Calvinist response simply does not work:
Question 1: How can it sincerely be said the Son of God, and the eternal life He brings, has been given to those whom He didn’t die for and thus never intended to save through the redemptive giving of His life—which is the testimonial basis upon which John says eternal life has been given? (i.e. “he has not believed in the testimony that God has given of His Son. And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son (vs. 10).”
Questions 2: Moreover since John says the testimony of God’s witness to the world is established on the basis that He has given eternal life though the giving of His Son, how can unbelievers slander God as a liar if it’s true (as Calvinists insist) that the Son was in fact not given to them as a redemptive offering for their sins? What exactly are they not believing that is condemning them?
Once again we are left with the absurd notion that God condemns unbelievers for refusing to believe His Son was given solely to the select elect—but not to them. In other words it would mean people do indeed stand condemned for their unbelief, but not for disbelieving the gospel is good news for them—but for disbelieving Calvinism’s special doctrine of unconditional election on behalf of the elect!
And that is ridiculous!
To this all faithful Christians must say to our misguided Calvinist brothers and sisters, “Cow cookies!” We are called to hold unbelievers to account. The Son has been given and you knowingly reject Him to your peril.
-StriderMTB