GOD-DAMNED HYPOCRITES - PART 1
There
are none so hated as those that may reveal the truth, be it by their words,
deeds or mere existence. This is
something too many of us learn during our lives, observing what occurs in the
world and from the extreme hardship of personal experience. It has caused us to question our faith many
times and despite our best efforts, the hypocrisy and injustice inflicted on so
many victims has continued unabated. Worse, it has even escalated, leading many
victims to become as bad as those that have harmed them. Those that bear the
burden of hardships suffer all the more because they are isolated and silenced
by a variety of means ranging in extremes, particularly if they try to reveal
the truth.
Christ was brutally tortured and then nailed to a cross, Stephen was stoned to death, John the Baptist and Paul were beheaded, Peter was crucified upside down, and in more modern times, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, Martin Luther King was murdered, and countless others have been treated just as badly. It has become all too easy to dismiss the suffering of others because what they endured was not as severe, but in context, their misery cannot be so easily dismissed.
Martin Luther was excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church because he dared to reveal the same hypocrisies within the priesthood and doctrines, behaviours for which Christ Himself rebuked the Pharisees. Martin Luther was a modern day Paul, threatened with torture and death by fire but was in no way dissuaded from doing as God asked to restore Christianity to the people. Unfortunately, while this launched the Protestant movement, it also led to the ultimate destruction of the Church and (as a direct result) Western society. It is cold comfort to read Matthew 12: 25 and realise that Christ actually warned us of this outcome.
Christ was brutally tortured and then nailed to a cross, Stephen was stoned to death, John the Baptist and Paul were beheaded, Peter was crucified upside down, and in more modern times, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, Martin Luther King was murdered, and countless others have been treated just as badly. It has become all too easy to dismiss the suffering of others because what they endured was not as severe, but in context, their misery cannot be so easily dismissed.
Martin Luther was excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church because he dared to reveal the same hypocrisies within the priesthood and doctrines, behaviours for which Christ Himself rebuked the Pharisees. Martin Luther was a modern day Paul, threatened with torture and death by fire but was in no way dissuaded from doing as God asked to restore Christianity to the people. Unfortunately, while this launched the Protestant movement, it also led to the ultimate destruction of the Church and (as a direct result) Western society. It is cold comfort to read Matthew 12: 25 and realise that Christ actually warned us of this outcome.
The
corruption of the Catholic Church continued unabated as the momentum of the
Reformation provided opportunity for all manner of false prophets to take root
and lead people astray. The Church has become a market place because
Christianity has been reduced to nothing more than a commodity, just like human
life, as the Legal System reduces ‘justice’ to legal outcomes sold to the
highest bidder. The simple truth is that if you do not like what God expects of
you then you can find a “Christian” Church that allows every false prophet and
unrepentant sinner to continue behaving as they wish without fear of eternal
damnation because they interpret the Holy Bible to suit their vile agendas.
In our so-called Age of Enlightenment, arrogance has allowed us to disprove the existence of God based on “scientific evidence”. According to the most zealous fanatics of science, their faith in their belief system reveals the Holy Bible as fiction regardless of historical evidence because in it impossible to conclusively prove miracles or even what was recorded in its pages. Where other historical documents may be taken as incontrovertible fact, religious texts are automatically considered falsehoods. Indeed, every time evidence is found to support religious texts, the bar is set higher.
Never mind the fact that scientific theories are too often presented as fact by those same fanatics, or that a lot of science fact has since been disproven. Phrenology and Eugenics, the Earth being flat and being at the centre of the universe just some of the flawed beliefs quickly dismissed because now we know everything and before then we didn’t. That’s exactly what the people back then thought too. Who knows which is right and which is wrong? Were any of us around when specific incidents occurred, and would people believe our testimony? No. Both factions rely upon faith when they cannot prove something. But it is the impact of human desire, not science or and religion, that has caused so much harm in our world.
In our so-called Age of Enlightenment, arrogance has allowed us to disprove the existence of God based on “scientific evidence”. According to the most zealous fanatics of science, their faith in their belief system reveals the Holy Bible as fiction regardless of historical evidence because in it impossible to conclusively prove miracles or even what was recorded in its pages. Where other historical documents may be taken as incontrovertible fact, religious texts are automatically considered falsehoods. Indeed, every time evidence is found to support religious texts, the bar is set higher.
Never mind the fact that scientific theories are too often presented as fact by those same fanatics, or that a lot of science fact has since been disproven. Phrenology and Eugenics, the Earth being flat and being at the centre of the universe just some of the flawed beliefs quickly dismissed because now we know everything and before then we didn’t. That’s exactly what the people back then thought too. Who knows which is right and which is wrong? Were any of us around when specific incidents occurred, and would people believe our testimony? No. Both factions rely upon faith when they cannot prove something. But it is the impact of human desire, not science or and religion, that has caused so much harm in our world.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/brief-of-evidence-against-cardinal-george-pell-returned-to-prosecutors-20170206-gu6jy8.html
The
Socialist ideologies preached by Christ that form the core ideologies of the
Christian faith conflict with the Capitalist ideologies of Western society:
they are polar opposites. Despite this, the incompatible blend of religion and
economic drives continue to be maintained and define our culture. Capitalism
masquerades as a legitimate component of the Protestant denomination of
Christianity even as the core values undermine and seek to destroy the message
of Christ. Western society is filled with people who know nothing about the
Holy Bible and yet waste their lives spending every opportunity to tear down
Christianity, their actions doing more harm than they will ever realise. How
many times must we hear that religion is responsible for all the ills of the
world? It is not God that does these things, but people. Even in the absence of
religion, the brutality and injustice continue unabated.
The
Churches are a good example of this conflict between Christianity and
self-centred, often sick, human desire. The Royal Commission into Institutional
Responses to Child (Sexual) Abuse is the perfect example. While long-overdue
and well-deserved, it was an act of hypocrisy on the part of the government.
The Terms of Reference excluded complaints that did not involve a sexual
component, and prevented any investigation of abuse that was inflicted by the
police and public services. The findings, then, were limited to the horrific
activities of the Churches and the paedophiles their administration and
authorities concealed and enabled by isolating and silencing the victims.
Worse, by defaming, ostracising, and terrorising their victims, driving many to
self-harm, mental breakdown, substance abuse, broken and wasted lives, and
suicide.
Moses delivered God’s first written instructions and,
even with the belief that there is no God, the last five of the Ten
Commandments still form the foundations of the modern Western Legal system. Yet
from the very moment those first laws were delivered, a multitude of laws were
designed to circumvent the intention of those ten so people could still do what
they wanted, and the process continues to this very day. The modern Western
Legal system is not about justice, it is about injustice. Inequality ensures
that the most disadvantaged cannot access legal representation let alone afford
it, selling legal outcomes to the highest bidder and punishing those that dare
challenge the system, regardless of intention.
This
is the heart of the problem; the absence of equality and the abundance of moral
and ethical bankruptcy. The entrenched culture of corruption that has festered
and spread as a malignant cancer in the absence of true Christian morality,
something that has been systematically purged and replaced with the mass
delusion promised by so-called Enlightenment. Logic and reason have nothing to
do with modern Western society.
Feudalism did not end, it merely evolved into Capitalism with its false
promises of so-called Trickle-Down Economics and rotten core of Neo-liberalism,
a far more destructive beast spawned from the very worst of what modern
Christianity offered and which is dedicated to satisfying human corruption.
The most despicable aspect about modern Western society is not the idiocy that leads people to try to drag others down into the vile abyss in which they dwell, but the fact that so many of them continue to lurk in the remnants of the Christian faith, those places that claim to be Churches, those places where hypocrites claim to be Christians and, worse, ministers, priests, deacons, bishops, elders, and every other rank of Church leader. It is these false prophets and hypocrites that lust for power and every other perversion that do the most harm, and their mindless, self-righteous flocks do their bidding to ensure victims are so easily dismissed and punished for daring to seek help, justice, dignity, and what’s right.
The most despicable aspect about modern Western society is not the idiocy that leads people to try to drag others down into the vile abyss in which they dwell, but the fact that so many of them continue to lurk in the remnants of the Christian faith, those places that claim to be Churches, those places where hypocrites claim to be Christians and, worse, ministers, priests, deacons, bishops, elders, and every other rank of Church leader. It is these false prophets and hypocrites that lust for power and every other perversion that do the most harm, and their mindless, self-righteous flocks do their bidding to ensure victims are so easily dismissed and punished for daring to seek help, justice, dignity, and what’s right.
Too many politicians and members of the media, police and public servants is not much better, either ignoring reports they decide won't get enough public attention to cause them concern or from which they can profit, or going out of their way to bully, abuse and intimidate into silence. The infamous and idiotic behaviour of John Laws, Mark Latham and their ilk toward gay people, not white people, women, victims of child abuse and domestic violence, and any other topic where the correct moral and ethical response is a no-brainer (and yet they are still woefully under-qualified) not just reveals how bad the problem is, but sets the example too many other lack-wits follow.
Compared to the suffering of Christ, Paul, Peter, Stephen, John the Baptist and so many others, the abuse and then the defamation to discredit and silence modern day victims of “Christian” Churches is as nothing. It is all too easy to dismiss the sufferings of so many others when the Catholic Church displays pictures of the abuse and suffering of Christ to remind us of the past and His sacrifice for the sins of Mankind, and the pictures of the Saints and their suffering. There are no pictures, memorials, testimony and literature of every victim of the Catholic Church, all those children, beaten, tortured, raped, forced to suffer in silence a life sentence of torment, effectively murdered. But does this mean that it should be ignored?
According
to the mandate of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child
(Sexual) Abuse the answer is no, but a closer look at the motives behind the
inquest reveals that the truth is not as important as the outcome. While this inquest
is well-deserved and long-overdue, it is simply a means to undermine the
authority of the Churches, and further erode the power and influence of
Christianity in a conflict between rival powers that has lasted for hundreds,
even thousands of years. Why is the inquest limited to Churches and a few other
agencies instead of encompassing Government agencies involved in the cover-up
and the abuses that have occurred? Why is it limited to sexual abuse as if any
other form is inconsequential?
THE
HIDDEN CRIMES
Despite being founded on Judea-Christian ideologies,
most citizens of Western societies are not Christian, even many of those that
claim otherwise. The morality of the Christian faith has been discarded and
replaced with the morally and ethically bankrupt ideologies of Capitalism which
enable, and even promote, the seven deadly sins of greed, envy, selfishness,
pride, idleness, dishonesty and injustice. In contrast, the ideologies of United
States are founded upon freedom, equality, justice and liberty (which also includes
meritocracy, accountability, and democracy), what we in Australia call a fair
go.
In
reality, the injustice resulting from the seven deadly sins is something we do
not discuss and rarely even acknowledge. Although the media is filled with
articles and news reports revealing all manner of immoral, unethical and
barbaric acts of injustice, these are only what we have been allowed to see.
There is a grey area in the Legal System where victims are denied justice
because their income prevents access to Legal Aid and yet fails to provide
financial means by which they can obtain private legal assistance. Worse, the
law is designed to protect offenders through the presumption of innocence while
failing to extend the same courtesy to victims, who are regarded as liars
unless they can prove otherwise.
Western society also misuses privacy laws to prevent victims from revealing what they have suffered. This allows predators to continue inflicting themselves on victims without fear of being exposed or suffering any deterrent to discourage their vile behaviour. Modern Western society (especially in Australia) has been infected by a culture of corruption for decades, one that is entrenched within the police and public services, allowing those who are supposed to help victims of injustice to instead inflict incompetence, negligence, indifference, idleness, mockery, insults, unfounded and defamatory accusations, and intimidation.
The public services, in particular, have become an unnavigable, self-perpetuating, cyclical system of such convoluted bureaucracy that a victim of crime and injustice is often unable to even find help, and combined with the treatment inflicted by too many so-called public servants, they are discouraged from even seeking help. Any attempt to report a crime to the authorities will too often be met with, and ended through, this culture. Victims are told their “allegations” are not enough to warrant an investigation regardless of the actual evidence, which will be dismissed out of hand without any consideration.
Western society also misuses privacy laws to prevent victims from revealing what they have suffered. This allows predators to continue inflicting themselves on victims without fear of being exposed or suffering any deterrent to discourage their vile behaviour. Modern Western society (especially in Australia) has been infected by a culture of corruption for decades, one that is entrenched within the police and public services, allowing those who are supposed to help victims of injustice to instead inflict incompetence, negligence, indifference, idleness, mockery, insults, unfounded and defamatory accusations, and intimidation.
The public services, in particular, have become an unnavigable, self-perpetuating, cyclical system of such convoluted bureaucracy that a victim of crime and injustice is often unable to even find help, and combined with the treatment inflicted by too many so-called public servants, they are discouraged from even seeking help. Any attempt to report a crime to the authorities will too often be met with, and ended through, this culture. Victims are told their “allegations” are not enough to warrant an investigation regardless of the actual evidence, which will be dismissed out of hand without any consideration.
In
many cases, the victim will be accused of lying or being a predator themselves,
and warned that if they continue to speak about what happened they will be
taken to court and sued for “defamation”. Attempts to report this kind of
corruption within the system will result in the same bullying, insults and
intimidation and, at best, empty promises of an “internal investigation at
level”. That’s right, the people at fault will investigate themselves and then
decide if the matter needs to proceed to the next level. This is a conflict of
interest, the very same as the one Royal Commission recommended the Catholic
Church cease practicing because it was being used to cover-up what could only
be considered evil. If those who remain silent are said to condone, then surely
those who force victims to remain silent must be complicit.
Needless
to say, nobody will be found accountable and the “allegations” will be
dismissed, any paperwork buried in the system, never to be seen again, and the
victim instructed to remain silent and stop pursuing the matter any further.
And the Government ordered a Royal Commission limited to the actions of those
in organisations outside the police and public services, in what is clearly a
politically motivated agenda. The same Government that is responsible for the
Lost Generation, Stolen Generation, and the forced separation of newborn
children from their unwed teenage mothers for adoption.
The vast majority of victims from these atrocities
never saw their parents, children or other relatives again, ever, and decades
later they collectively received empty platitudes from politicians seeking to
further their own agenda, not one-on-one personal apologies, and with no efforts
to compensate the victims, many of whom died never knowing justice. Despite
this, the same kind of injustices continue to occur and continue to be
concealed.
It
is very easy to assume that these kind of incidents only occur under the regime
of things like the Catholic Church and Government departments like Child Safety
Services, Health, Military and others, but you would be wrong. Child Safety
Services in Queensland has been subject to Government ordered official internal
investigations several times over the last two decades, all of which found the
same problems and yet nothing changes. In one investigation, a New South Wales
Child Safety Services agency was found to have failed to investigate over seventy-five-thousand reports of child
abuse.
There
are many, many other incidents in much smaller organisations that the general
public will never know about or even that they have occurred because of a
conflict of interest termed “internal investigation” that conceals fault and
dismisses the “allegations” as “unsubstantiated”. The full horror of the truth
is so ugly that many people refuse to believe it because they do not want to
believe it. Instead, they will believe all manner of lies used to defame and
discredit the victims and, in so doing, help to conceal the crimes that have
been committed. We seek to silence victims to maintain what we have, or benefit
from the misfortune and injustices inflicted upon them, refusing to help those
in need, and even breaking contact with those who tell us things that are
disturbing and require us to show them compassion and assistance.
It is very, very easy to be part of a cult and shrug
and do nothing because we know, deep down, that there is nothing we can do on
our own that will change anything, especially if by helping then we, too, will
be ostracised, defamed and vilified. It is much easier to assist vile people
with our silence than to help victims of injustice. And so the question we must
ask ourselves is one of faith: how can we claim to be Christians if we do not
do as God instructed?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-30/hunter-child-abuse-special-commission-of-inquiry-clears-police/5488942
Indeed, what is it God asked of us? What is our duty to God if we want to claim the title of Christian? We all must walk the road to Damascus but many of us are unaware that we are blind. Have you ever sat down and read the Holy Bible? Have you ever compared it to the doctrines of the various denominations? The conversions of Paul and Martin Luther demonstrate the sudden clarity of enlightenment when they realised that what they were doing was not the work of God but sin as they served to satisfy self-centred human desires. We mistakenly believe that what we do is often as nothing compared to what others do, and so we spend our time looking for obvious wrongdoings in others to justify our own behaviour, even going out of our way to spread malicious gossip to conceal our own faults.
The
mentality of ‘us and them’ is as bad as so called Enlightenment where logic and
reason are misused to defend and excuse all manner of immoral and unethical
behaviour. We dehumanise other, even slandering righteous people, to justify
our vile behaviours. We cast off the Holy Bible and miracles of Christ as myths
because we either cannot replicate what was done or simply do not want to
believe it, but we will believe scientific theories
like Evolution as fact because we believe we can prove them with science as we
currently understand it, an attitude of arrogance that disregards the constant
changes and errors in what we discover almost every year.
But by the same token, we have deplorable people in
the Churches hypocritically trying to force the rules of their cult on
non-believers in complete defiance of what Christ Himself told them, and even
as they point accusing fingers at Islam and claim all Muslims are evil,
responsible for the crimes of a small minority. It is not only embarrassing,
but drags the Christian faith into disrepute. Nobody cares that you dispute how
old the Earth is, or disagree with homosexuality or abortion (regardless of
circumstances), or are hell-bent on sacrificing children to prove your sick
faith in a twisted religion.
We
allow ourselves to be influenced by what various factions of the media or
rotten preachers tell us are social norms. We not only tolerate, but engage in
and justify all manner of immoral acts from gambling, drug and alcohol
addictions, brawling, slander, promiscuity, theft, domestic violence, child and
elder abuse, bigotry, and far, far worse. In the United States they get around
the conflict of serving either God or money by printing “In God We Trust” on
their money, and outside one of their banks is a huge statue of a golden bull,
while gun crimes are rampant and people are being forced out of their homes
onto the street because of corrupt laws to profit greedy people, and yet most
of those at fault claim to be Christians.
It
is very, very easy to turn a blind eye to what happens when there is no benefit
to acknowledge ungodly behaviour, especially when doing so could prevent us
from accomplishing our agendas to obtain personal desires. We have stepped off
the road to Damascus and now we wander alone in the desert. We listen to the voices
on the wind that offer temptations, and all we have to do is bow down and
worship sin instead of listening to the voice that advises us to repent and
follow God or, at the very least, observe the same kind of morality as Christ
and other good people have preached.
We are so wise that we know there are no demons,
angels or God, and yet most of us believe we will go to Heaven. The morals
behind simple children’s stories are no longer conveyed because we have new
stories that promote immoral behaviour. We will believe all manner of ludicrous
things without, like the Earth and universe only being six-thousand years old,
but we will refuse to believe children and others who reveal the hypocrisy and
injustice inflicted by leaders within our churches.
We
crave stories about sinful behaviours that demonstrate how bad behaviour is its
own reward and there are no lasting repercussions. We even have entertainment
allowing us to choose our idols who, like too many of our most successful
athletes, go on to commit all manner of anti-social behaviours and avoid legal
and financial penalties that the most disadvantaged will incur even if they are
innocent.
In a sign of the times where accountability and personal responsibility are avoided at all costs, many Christians are even misled and believe that people who do not go to Heaven simply die and then there is nothing; no Hell, no eternal damnation, no punishment for the sins we commit that inflicted misery on others. Some of us even say “if God loves us so much, then why would He send us to Hell if we do not do what He wants?” Even if you don’t believe in God, the arrogance of this statement is astonishing.
This question answers itself. Would you welcome into your home someone that disrespects and violates you? The demand that God serve us and reward us for our worst excesses is astounding. We have a whole book that demonstrates what happens when people ignore the simple rules He gave us to live in peace, demonstrates the flawed nature of humanity. “If God exists,” we ask, “why does He let bad things happen and do nothing?” “Why doesn’t God speak to us anymore?” Both these questions have simple answers. God does not make bad things happen, we do. If God exists, He does talk to us, He gave us a whole book, but we do not listen.
In a sign of the times where accountability and personal responsibility are avoided at all costs, many Christians are even misled and believe that people who do not go to Heaven simply die and then there is nothing; no Hell, no eternal damnation, no punishment for the sins we commit that inflicted misery on others. Some of us even say “if God loves us so much, then why would He send us to Hell if we do not do what He wants?” Even if you don’t believe in God, the arrogance of this statement is astonishing.
This question answers itself. Would you welcome into your home someone that disrespects and violates you? The demand that God serve us and reward us for our worst excesses is astounding. We have a whole book that demonstrates what happens when people ignore the simple rules He gave us to live in peace, demonstrates the flawed nature of humanity. “If God exists,” we ask, “why does He let bad things happen and do nothing?” “Why doesn’t God speak to us anymore?” Both these questions have simple answers. God does not make bad things happen, we do. If God exists, He does talk to us, He gave us a whole book, but we do not listen.
After my long break with the Catholic Church, a Presbyterian Minister loaned me a book and suggested I might find it interesting. It was titled Here I Stand, although I don’t remember the author. I rarely bother to remember authors. The story and message it contains is what interests me. It was about the trials of Martin Luther, what he believed, what he tried to do, and what outcomes resulted. I discovered that I was not alone in my crisis of faith. I discovered that Martin Luther had the same ones over five hundred years before my birth. Oddly enough, I had never heard of Martin Luther before then. The Catholic Church did not teach me about him. Even so, I found the Presbyterian Ministry itself, in that particular Church, and others that it spawned, demonstrated hypocrisy on the same scale as the Catholic Church.
My efforts to discuss this hypocrisy were silenced very quickly. I was instructed to remain silent. I had been raised Catholic and, as such, my opinion – I was informed – meant nothing and the young members destined for leadership roles because their relatives were Ministers knew better. The truth was, their knowledge of Catholicism, the Reformation, Christianity in general, and other matters, was sadly lacking, and would not improve. One even corrected me and added “King” to the name, claiming that was evidence that I didn’t know what I was talking about. For the record, Martin Luther King was an African-American Moslem, a patriot of the US from the Twentieth Century seeking equality, not a white German monk who broke from the Catholic Church and triggered the Protestant movement during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.
And
so we discover that falling into bad habits is a common behaviour pattern
throughout the Old and New Testament that continues even today. It is a
difficult concept to understand because many of us are unwilling to accept that
some of the things we do are bad, but we do behave badly, even if it means we
do nothing when we know something unjust is being done. When I was a child, I
asked a Priest why God didn’t do something to stop bad things happening, to
help people. He said, “God did do something, He made you.”
We have free will. We choose to do as we please or to see reason and do what is right, what Christ told us so we can live together in peace. God does not give us what we want unless it helps achieve His greater purpose, but He does give us what we need. It is up to us to make the most of what He gives us and to try to understand the reason why we were not given what we wanted. It is a difficult thing to have faith in, and like many, my faith is sorely tested. My doubts grow by the day as those who do evil are rewarded, while their victims continue to suffer in an unending, unrelenting world without hope.
Still, Stephen probably didn’t want to be stoned to death, Paul probably didn’t want to be beheaded, and Christ really didn’t want to be crucified, but they suffered the indignity, brutality and injustices of their deaths because it served a greater purpose. We complain about small inconveniences and then inflict far worse on others simply to satisfy our own self-centred desires. Too many of us rebel against God and yet still have the audacity to call ourselves Christians. We need to think about what it really means to actually be a Christian and ask some hard questions.
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