This is more common a mistake than you'd think, lots of people believe their faith in the Church makes them a good Christian. "Oh our leaders will teach me well. Oh our congregations will take care of my needs."
The problem is, all too often the Church is a hot car with a wasp infestation - and you're the dog trapped inside. One wrong move and you're stung, but if you do nothing you're toast.
When she's at her best, the Church does a mediocre job of preaching the Gospel, reaching the lost and caring for the poor. At her worst she actively does the opposite of all these things. Trusting the ecclesia for everything is like trusting a spouse that can't quite get over their heroin addiction.
But if you prioritize our Lord, seeking the Father's provisions and the Son's redemption and the Spirit's holiness, then that focus will show you the God who never lets you down the way the Church does. When you meet Him at the preaching of the Word, when you are before His presence at the Eucharist, then the instability of the outside world and in your congregation doesn't matter. Sure, you and I must still carry on and go about the business of our congregations, but we are not so enmeshed in it that we have a crisis of faith when the churches inevitably fail us. Look to the Lord my friends.
You know, previously I characterized the founder of buddhism as a lazy, wife-abandoning would-be philosopher king, a total sack of garbage. Boy was I blind. It turns out he was all of those things but also a control freak that hated fun.
"The only people who disagree with this are basically women and mental children who need their lives to be an unending cavalcade of cheap disposable distraction segmented from one minute to the next. It’s mediocre carnival slop, a mindless cacophony of silly bullshit noise cutting into the neutral silence of a public space, parasitic panhandling puppet parlor peasant slop that was brain rot content centuries before TikTok would ever come into existence.
Ardent defenders soyfacing and clapping for the accordion midget are the same types of people who are amazed by shirtless minorities doing backflip twerks on the subway, sweaty weird dudes dressed in cartoon character costumes begging for tips on the street, and homeless people banging on buckets and pans.
They’re the same type of people who look at carnie meth heads spray painting galaxies and planets onto 2x2 sheets of paper using bowls and plastic bags for 30 seconds and saying stupid shit like “Wow this is REAL art you belong in a gallery!” It’s dumb gypsy garbage, the lowest effort parlor trick nonsense meant to captivate fat retard tourists for errant dollars while they waddle about marveling at goofy trashcans and funny police uniforms in the glorified Disneyland styrofoam setpiece of whatever failed second world country whose GDP is entirely upheld by the vacation budget of Americans.
People have a hard time grasping the delineation between mediocrity and talent because they lack any level of perspective. There was once a time when reading books was rightfully considered a vice, a viewpoint which seems incredulous now considering the average span of acceptable media consumption rounds out to less than two minutes. Everything is a subconscious impulse towards distraction and disruption.
Music is an imposition forced onto you everywhere you go. You can’t escape it, not at the gym, not in supermarkets, not even at the fucking gas station where the screen comes on and babbles at you as soon as you start pumping. When is the last time you actually questioned why restaurants need to be playing music while you eat? Every moment of silence is Real Estate for someone to fill with the world’s freest drug to suit their own interests.
No, I’m not being unreasonable here, YOU are. You, who has spent your entire life bombarded by sheer constant stimulus. If you don’t immediately understand and resonate with what I’m talking about, you are incapable of understanding because you have been deafened by the unending onslaught of tinnitus inducing mediocre stimuli churned together without regard to cohesion or subtlety. Life’s symphony of flavors, swatches, chords, and scents are all churned into a homogenous gray casserole of slop to intake through an IV tube of incoherent consumption at all hours of the day.
Go ahead, clap for the gypsy garbage street performer as he stomps his feet and bangs his drum without rhythm or intention. Lick your lips because the plastic bowl of meat, cheese, and corn chips that came out of the side of a truck got extra chipotle ranch garbage sauce sprayed all over it. Bring a Bluetooth speaker with you while you go hiking. Close your eyes and lay back into the great ocean of averages. Feel the weightlessness of not trying, not caring anymore. Listen to all the noise seeping into the empty moments of the day, filling every second like water in a crevice. Silence is extinct, dignity is a myth, taste is bigotry, and judgement is a sin. Fuck you."
My question to those same people though: when every pastor in your area is preaching the same subversive stuff, do you have the same response and start up a home church?
The answer should be yes - and you can find resources to start one up here: verylutheran.biz
Babel was built with a Post-Flood Consensus ethos.
Whenever a church body starts getting worldly, expect it to split up. Want to act like Babel? You'll get the Babel treatment. Denominations were an inevitability.
God split the denominations in order to ensure that men may still be saved. Pentecost doesn't undo Babel's confusion of languages - Pentecost affirms it as something God does to save souls.
Hunter Wallace is spot on here. Never trust anyone who tells you that you can be either a Christian or a WN, but never both. It is perfectly fine to be a Christian and an ethnic nationalist - but as far as Jesus is concerned, this is so long as you are a Christian *first* and foremost.
@sickburnbro HEY. Their name change means they're more INCLUSIVE now. They're not about molesting our sons anymore, now they're about molesting EVERYONE.